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Missionary  principles  and 
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Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 


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Missionary  Principles 
and  Practice 

A  Discussion   of  Christian  Missions 
and  of  some   Criticisms  upon   them 


By 


Robert  E.  Speer 


Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States 


New  York     Chicago     Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London  ^  Edinburgh 


'.^' 


Copyright  1902 

BY 

FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 
(August) 


.i£FACE 

THE  purpose  of  this  volume  is  ( i )  to  set  forth 
some  of  the  main  principles  of  the  mission 
movement  on  which  it  rests  in  its  appeal  at 
home  and  in  its  work  abroad,  (2)  to  apply 
these  principles  in  some  illustrative  instances,  espe- 
cially to  the  conditions  in  China,  with  which  men  are 
now  fflost  familiar,  and  which  many  regard  as  putting 
the  missionary  enterprise  to  its  conclusive  test,  (3) 
to  suggest  by  a  few  sketches  of  mission  fields  and  the 
results  of  mission  work  in  life,  both  the  need  and 
power  of  the  work,  and  (4)  to  enforce  the  duty  and 
privilege  of  the  serious  attempt  speedily  to  evangelize 
the  world,  and  thus  enable  Christianity  at  once  to  dis- 
play and  to  realize  its  divine  mission  to  all  mankind. 
Some  of  the  chapters  of  this  book  have  appeared 
in  the  Churchman,  the  Congrcgationalist,  the  Sunday 
School  Times,  the  Homiletic  Review,  the  Missionary 
Review,  and  other  papers.  The  concluding  chapter 
appears  also  in  Twentieth  Century  Addresses,  a 
volume  containing  the  addresses  delivered  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Presby- 
terian Church,  in  recognition  of  the  advent  of  the 
Twentieth  Century,  before  the  General  Assembly  in 
Philadelphia,  on  May  14th,  1901. 

The  convictions  that  underlie  these  discussions  are 
(i)  that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  only  Saviour  and  Lord 
of  human  life,  and  that  it  is  as  certain  that  He  is  to  rule 
the  whole  world  as  it  is  that  the  world  needs  to  be 

3 


4  Preface 

redeemed  and  rightly  ruled,  and  that  He  alone  is  able 
to  redeem  and  rule  it  rightly;  and  (2)  that  Christ  is 
Master  not  only  of  the  life  that  now  is,  but  also  of 
that  which  is  to  come,  that  He  is  the  Way,  the  Truth 
and  the  Life,  that  no  man  cometh  unto  the  Father 
but  by  Him,  that  out  of  Him  there  is  salvation  neither 
here  nor  hereafter,  while 

"  In  Him  is  life  provided 
For  all  mankind." 


CONTENTS 

PART  I.    GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  STATED 

PAGE 

I.  Missions — Primary   and   Essential  in 

Christianity.       ....       9 

II.  Common  Honesty  and  Foreign  Mis- 
sions.        .         .         .         .         .16 

III.  The  Need  of  the  Non-Christian  World 

for  Christ.         .  .  .  .21 

IV.  What  are  Christian  Missionaries  Try- 

ing to  Do.         .         .         .         •     27 
V.  The  Aim  of  Christian  Missions.         .     34 
VI.  The  Science  of  Missions.         .         .     43 
VII.  The  Kind  of  Men  Needed  in  Foreign 

Missions.  .  .  .  .69 

VIII.  Some  Current  Criticisms  of  Missions.     79 
IX.  The  Assumption  Underlying  Mission- 
ary Criticism.     .  .  .  '87 
X.  Missions    and    Spiritual    Life.         .     92 
XI.  Missionaries  and  Their  Rights.         .     95 
XII.  Christianity  the  Solitary  and  Sufficient 

Religion.    .....   109 

PART  II.     GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  APPLIED 

XIII.  The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in 

China 130 

XIV.  Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible  for 

the  Troubles  in  China?         .  .146 

5 


Contents 

PAGE 

XV.  The   Scuttle    Policy   in   China.    .      .156 
XVI.  Has  Missionary  Work  in  China  Been 

Worth    While?  .  .  .170 

XVII.  Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda.  181 
XVIII.  A  Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions 

in  China.  .  .  .  .194 

XIX.  Higher  Education  in  Missions  with 
Special  Reference  to  Conditions 
in   China.  ....  229 

XX.  Truth  or  Tolerance.         .         .  .248 

XXI.  Some  Missionary  Aspects  of  Paul's 

First    Itineration.         .  .  .259 

XXII.  Some  Missionary  Aspects  of  Paul's 

Second  Itineration.     .         .         .  267 

PART  III.     NEED  AND  RESULTS 

XXIII.  Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in 

Asia.         .....  277 

XXIV.  Persian  Mohammedans  and  Moham- 

medanism.         ....   295 
XXV.  Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  High- 
way  324 

XXVI.  On  the  Corpse  Road.        .         .         .340 
XXVII.  Why    Christianity    Appeals    to    the 

Japanese.  ....  349 

XXVIII.  Shosaburo     Aoyama,     A     Japanese, 

Christian    Gentleman.  .  .   355 

XXIX.  Four    Life    Stories.  .  .  .365 


Contents  7 

PAGE 

XXX.  Pastor  Tsiang's  Story.       .         .         .  375 

XXXI.  A  Chinese  Preacher.         .  .  .  381 

XXXII.  Two   Korean    Christians.  .  .  387 

XXXIII.  Missionary    Biographies.  .  .  393 

XXXIV.  Missionary  Heroism  I  Have  Known.  400 
XXXV.  Li  Hung  Chang  and  Christian  Mis- 
sions.        .....  4*^6 

XXXVI.  The  CiviUzing  Influence  of  Missions.  412 
XXXVII.  The   Propagation   of   Christianity  in 

the  Last  Century.        .         .         .421 

PART  IV.    PRIVILEGE  AND  DUTY 

XXXVIII.  The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Chris- 
tian  Life.  .         .         .         .  428 
XXXIX.  Christ,  the  Desire  of  the  Nations.       .  443 
XL.  What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman.  455 
XLI.  Prayer  and  Missions.         .  .  •       .  467 
XLII.  The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions.         .  481 
XLIIL  The  Resources  of  the  Christian  Church.  493 
XLIV.  The  EvangeUzation  of  the  World  in 

this  Generation.  .  .  .51° 

XLV.  The  Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World 

to   Christ.  .         .         .         .   527 


Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 


MISSIONS— PRIMARY  AND  ESSENTIAL  IN  CHRIS- 
TIANITY 

THE  last  command  of  Christ  is  often  set  forth 
as  alike  the  primary  and  conclusive  argument 
for  missions.  What  was  the  last  cammand  of 
His  lips  must  have  been  one  of  the  nearest 
desires  of  His  heart.  But  the  work  of  missions  is  our 
duty,  not  chiefly  because  of  the  command  of  Christ's 
lips,  but  because  of  the  desire  of  His  heart.  He  bade 
His  Church  evangelize  the  world  because  He  wanted 
it  evangelized,  and  He  wanted  it  evangelized  because 
He  knew  that  it  needed  to  be  evangelized.  Our  duty 
in  the  matter  is  determined,  not  primarily  by  His  com- 
mand, but  by  the  facts  and  conditions  of  life  which 
underlie  it.  Even  if  Jesus  had  not  embodied  the 
missionary  duty  of  the  Church  in  the  "  great  com- 
mission," we  should  be  under  obligation  to  evangelize 
the  world  by  reason  of  the  essential  character  of  Chris- 
Ltianity  and  its  mission  to  the  world. 

There  are  minds,  doubtless,  to  which  a  verbal  en- 
actment is  more  solemn  and  coercing  than  the  moral 
principle  which  lies  back  of  it  and  finds  expression 
in  it,  but  which  would  exist  still  with  equally  binding 
force  if  the  verbal  enactment  were  wanting.  The  com- 
mand, "  Lie  not,"  does  not  create  the  obligation  not  to 
lie.  That  exists  irrespective  of  its  statement  in  a  com- 
mandment. But  there  are,  of  course,  uses  of  the  formal 
declaration.    It  springs  of  necessity  from  the  existence 


lo         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  the  principle  back  of  it  and  clutches  minds  which 
would  evade  or  be  unable  to  appreciate  the  unexpressed 
but  vital  principle.  To  say  that  Jesus  plainly  and 
unequivocally  ordered  the  Church  to  take  up  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  is  to  satisfy  these  minds  and  close 
the  question  of  duty. 

But  it  is  never  wise  to  rest  duty  upon  mere  enact- 
ment.    "  Arbitrary  orders,"  said  Confucius,  "  are  op- 
posed to  good  government."    To  feed  duty  with  emo- 
-  Ly^     jtion  and  power  it  must  be  nourished  upon  the  reason 
^  Ifor  a  course  of  action,  not  upon  a  legal  prescription  of 

Ht  alone.  Men  who  assent  to  the  missionary  enterprise 
on  the  strength  of  the  last  command  of  Christ  alone, 
or  primarily,  will  give  it  little  support,  and  their  in- 
terest in  it  will  soon  become  as  formal  as  the  ground 
on  which  it  rests.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  is  higher 
than  legalism,  and  it  is  of  the  spirit  of  legalism  to  press 
injunctions  of  courses  of  action  where  the  underlying 
principles  of  action  are  unseen  or  unfelt.  The  men 
who  have  done  the  work  of  God  in  the  world  are 
men  in  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  was  at  work,  and  who 
would  have  done  God's  work  even  in  the  absence  of 
expressed  legislation  as  to  the  nature  of  the  work  God 
wanted  done.  So  also  in  the  Christian  life  we  are 
called  to  possess,  not  primarily,  the  behaviour  of  Christ, 
but  His  mind,  from  which  the  appropriate  behaviour 
will  inevitably  flow. 

The  essential  thing  in  the  missionary  enterprise,  ac- 
cordingly, is  not  simple  repetition  of  the  last  com- 
mand of  Christ  and  the  earnest  affirmation :  "  These 
are  the  Church's  marching  orders,  and  that's  an  end 
of  it."  That  is  not  the  end  of  it.  To  suppose  that  un- 
ceasing reassertion  of  Christ's  last  command  and  nom- 
inal acceptance  of  it  as  binding  by  the  Church  would 
bring  us  anv  nearer  the  evangelization  of  the  world  is 


Missions — Primary  and  Essential  ii 

a  vain  hope.  We  shall  come  nearer  to  that  desired  goal 
/  just  in  proportion  as  we  appreciate  the  fundamental 
(  place  missions  hold  in  Christianity,  and  as  our  hearts 
respond  warmly  to  the  essential  principles  of  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  which  are  inseparably  interwoven  with  mis- 
sionary obligations.  And  this  is  the  only  way  we  shall 
ever  come  any  nearer  to  it. 

If  in  our  conviction  and  experience  we  are  sure  that 
in  Christ  we  possess  a  great  good,  then  we  will  give 
Him  to  the  world — not  otherwise,  no  matter  how  much 
we  may  talk  about  last  commands  and  "  great  commis- 
sions." 

If  Christ  means  nothing  to  us,  we  shall  surely  not  go 
\to  the  trouble  of  taking  Him  to  the  world.  Christianity, 
of  course,  asserts  that  Christ  means  everything  to  the 
believer,  and  surely  if  He  does,  the  believer  will  be 
driven  by  an  overmastering  desire  to  make  known  to 
all  the  glad  tidings  of  so  great  a  salvation.  The  mis- 
sionary enterprise  in  this  light  is  the  surest  evidence  of 
the  esteem  in  which  Christ  is  held.  The  Church  that  is 
doing  nothing  to  extend  His  knowledge  to  the  heathen 
world  is  furnishing  such  proof  that  Christ  means  little 
to  it  as  no  amount  of  verbal  worship  or  protestation  of 
.  devotion  can  annul.  The  fundamental  question  in  con- 
nection with  missions  is  this :  Is  Christ  of  any  worth  ? 
That  is  the  fundamental  question  of  Christianity.  If  •; ' 
He  is  of  worth  to  us,  He  is  of  worth  to  all  men,  and  f 
must  be  made  known  to  all  men. 

But  more  than  this  is  to  be  said.  Christianity  not 
only  declares  that  Christ  is  of  worth.  It  declares  that 
He  is  indispensable.  "  I  am  the  way,  the  truth  and 
the  life,"  said  Jesus.  "  No  man  cometh  unto  the 
Father  but  by  Me."  "  No  man  knowcth  the  Son  but 
the  Father,  and  neither  knoweth  any  man  the  Father 
save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willcth  to 


12         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

reveal  Him."  "  There  is  none  other  Name  under 
heaven  given  among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved." 
Now,  after  all  that  the  most  evasive  exegesis  can  do  in 
divorcing  these  words  from  all  implication  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  a  knowledge  of  the  historic  Christ,  there 
remains  an  unavoidable  assertion  of  the  indispensable 
worth  of  Jesus.  And  do  we  not  believe  that  He  is  of 
indispensable  worth?  Will  we  think  that  a  possible 
redemption  through  an  unknown  Christ  wrought  by 
the  grace  of  the  God  of  love  in  behalf  of  the  unevange- 
lized  will  suffice  for  them  while  we  treasure  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  historic  Saviour  for  ourselves?  If  such  a 
hypothetical  redemption  will  suffice  for  them,  why  will 
it  not  suffice  for  our  own  children  ?  If  Christ  is  worth 
so  much  that  we  teach  Him  to  our  own  children,  why 
do  we  leave  out  other  children  ?  And  what  sort  of  a  re- 
demption is  it  for  which  men  hope  for  the  heathen 
through  the  application  of  the  mercy  of  God  in  Christ 
outside  the  preaching  of  the  gospel?  It  has  no  effect 
upon  their  present  lives.  Granted  that  the  divine  mercy 
applies  to  all  faithful  and  aspiring  hearts  the  virtue  of 
Christ,  shall  we  deny  to  the  heathen  world  the  price- 
less possession  of  the  gospel,  not  as  a  response  to  faith 
and  aspiration,  but  as  the  source  of  it?  The  gospel  is 
the  summons  to  life  as  well  as  the  answer  of  life.  Its 
indispensable  worth  consists  in  both  of  these. 

And  it  is  not  wise  to  deal  with  this  solemn  business 
only  in  these  euphemistic  terms.  The  world  is  full 
of  good  humour,  of  kindliness,  of  neighbourly  trust 
knd  cheerful  acceptance  of  what  comes,  but  it  is  also  a 
host  world,  full  of  the  evident  hell  of  sin,  of  damned 
lives,  of  ruin  and  utter  death.  Czolgosz  is  no  lonely 
instance  of  deliberate  and  detestable  crime.  Passing 
by  the  abyss  of  wickedness  which  defies  religion  in 
Christian  lands  and  flourishes  under  its  ban,  there  are 


Missions — Primary  and  Essential  13 

greater  abysses  in  heathen  lands  which  flourish  under 
the  blessings  of  their  religions.  Let  the  Tantras  and 
Saktism  suffice  for  illustration,  or  the  carvings  on  the 
Temple  of  the  Rajah  of  Nepaul  in  the  most  sacred  city 
of  the  Hindus.  There  are  those  who  deprecate  the  use 
of  the  word  "  heathen,"  but  it  is  a  good  word,  of  repu- 
table lineage  and  of  just  and  honest  meaning.  If  the 
derivative  sense  of  the  word  is  sad  and  sorrowful,  it  is 
because  the  facts  have  made  it  so.  And  no  repudia- 
tion of  the  word  can  provide  an  escape  from  the  terrific 
grip  of  the  facts  of  life  back  of  it.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  resort  to  any  professional  statement  of  these  facts. 
Take  a  random  quotation  from  one  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson's  Letters  to  Young  People,  describing  a 
little  Samoan  boy  named  Arick :  "  It  was  one  of  those 
dreadful  days  of  rain,  the  sound  of  it  like  a  great  water- 
fall, or  like  a  tempest  of  wind  blowing  in  the  forest ; 
and  there  came  to  our  doorway  two  runaway  black 
boys  seeking  refuge.  In  such  weather  as  that  my 
enemy's  dog  (as  Shakespeare  says)  should  have  had  a 
right  to  shelter.  But  when  Arick  saw  the  two  poor 
rogues  coming,  with  their  empty  stomachs  and  drenched 
clothes,  one  of  them  with  a  stolen  cutlass  in  his  hand, 
through  that  world  of  falling  water,  he  had  no  thought 
of  pity  in  his  heart.  Crouching  behind  one  of  the  pil- 
lars of  the  verandah,  to  which  he  clung  with  his  two 
hands,  his  mouth  drawn  back  into  a  strange  sort  of 
smile,  his  eyes  grew  bigger  and  bigger,  and  his  whole 
face  was  just  like  one  word  MURDER  in  big 
capitals." 

No  denial  of  doctrine,  no  undefined  hopes  can  break 
the  force  of  the  simple,  stern  evidence  of  a  great  sec- 
tion of  human  life.  As  an  English  missionary  in 
China,  Dr.  Gibson,  writes  in  a  recent  book  on  Missions 
in  China,  one  of  the  sanest  and  ablest  of  recent  mission- 


/ 


14         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ary  books :  "  Whatever  dim  solace  we  may  gather  on 
this  subject  from  Scripture,  and  whatever  half-formed 
thoughts  we  may  cherish,  we  cannot  but  feel,  as  we 
look  around  us  in  a  heathen  country,  that,  without 
trenching  on  things  too  deep  for  us,  the  burden  of 
these  millions  of  souls  is  crushing  enough.  We  see  in 
the  daily  life  and  character  of  the  people  around  us  a 
profound  need  of  the  gospel  as  a  new  law  of  life  and 
of  the  living  Christ  as  the  only  Saviour  who  can 
through  it  bring  life  and  immortality  to  clear  light." 

If  this  is  true — and,  as  I  have  said,  nobody  will  be- 
lieve it,  or,  beheving  it,  will  be  in  the  least  moved  by 
it,  who  has  not  felt  in  his  own  soul  the  indispensable 
worth  of  Christ — what  shall  be  said  of  any  Christians 
who  do  not  share  in  the  missionary  enterprise?  This, 
that  they  are  either  culpably  ignorant  and  thoughtless, 
culpable  in  that  either  they  or  their  teachers  are  to 
blame,  or  else  that  their  Christianity  is  a  fictitious 
thing,  a  sham,  a  travesty.  And  in  either  case,  consider 
the  moral  horror  of  it.  Here  are  men  who  profess  to 
possess  a  divine  salvation,  pure  and  perfect,  and  to  be- 
lieve that  all  men  need  this  salvation  and  that  it  is 
adequate  for  all  and  intended  for  all,  and  who  yet  do 
nothing  to  give  it  to  those  who  have  an  equal  right 
to  it  and  a  need  for  it  only  less  because  those  who  are 
thus  withholding  it  are  in  danger  of  greater  condemna- 
tion. As  the  missionary  I  have  already  quoted  writes : 
"  I  see  two  men,  one  bom  without  his  own  choice  in 
China,  taking  up  his  inheritance  of  a  shallow,  narrow 
life,  a  life  of  the  earth,  earthy,  with  neither  the  gloom 
nor  the  glory  which  are  cast  by  the  light  and  shadow  of 
the  unseen  world,  and  to  whom  the  word  of  revelation 
has  never  come ;  another,  born  in  a  Christian  country, 
reared  in  an  atmosphere  of  Christian  piety,  learning 
from  his  earliest  years  the  words  of  life  and  living 
under  the  powers  of  the  world  to  come;  and  I  remeni- 


Missions — Primary  and  Essential  15 

ber  that  the  second  has  been  commanded  by  the  just 
Lord  to  tell  his  brother  the  way  of  Hfe,  but  he  has  been 
preoccupied,  busy  here  and  there,  has  had,  as  Brown- 
ing says  '  his  beetles  to  collect,'  and  for  eighteen  cen- 
turies has  forgotten  to  tell  his  brother."  Let  us  look 
at  that  picture  and  characterize  properly,  if  we  can, 
the  atrocious  loathsomeness  of  the  moral  judgment 
of  men  who  can  withhold  without  compunction  from 
the  world  the  best  news  that  ever  came  into  it. 

The  primary  place  of  missions  in  the  Christian 
Church  appears  in  a  new  light  at  this  point.  The  work  y 
is  required  by  the  essential  nature  of  the  gospel.  But, 
furthermore,  its  neglect  involves  outrage  upon  the 
essential  moral  integrities.  The  missionary  spirit  is 
the  spirit  of  simple  justice,  generosity  and  fair  deal-  • 
ing,  while  the  Christian  Church  or  the  Christian  heart 
from  which  that  spirit  is  absent  is  guilty  of  a  certain 
malfeasance,  tort  or  delict,  not  less  real  and  awful  be- 
cause recognized  by  no  human  law.  The  law  of  God 
recognizes  it  and  gives  it  proper  characterization  in 
the  blunt  and  fearless  language  it  never  hesitates  to 
use.  "  If  any  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his 
brother,  he  is  a  liar ;  for  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother, 
whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God,  whom  he 
hath  not  seen?  "  And  those  words  mean,  as  the  late 
Bishop  Westcott  pointed  out  in  his  commentary,  that 
"  the  claim  to  the  knowledge  of  God  without  obedience 
and  the  claim  to  the  love  of  God  without  action  involve 
not  only  the  denial  of  what  is  known  to  be  true,  but 
falseness  of  character."  Missions,  accord  in  f^^ly,  arc 
not  only  the  expression  of  the  Church's  interest  in  the 
world ;  they  are  the  evidence  of  her  love  of  her  Lord 
and  the  proof  of  the  honour  and  integrity  of  her  own 
life.  Tf  the  missionary  spirit  is  lacking,  the  necessary 
inference  is  easily  drawn,  and  it  di=plnvs  the  ftinda- 
mental  place  of  missions  in  the  Christian  Church. 


II 

COMMON    HONESTY   AND    FOREIGN    MISSIONS 

WE  are  crying  for  more  supematuralism, 
while  we  have  already  more  than  we  are 
willing  to  use.  We  are  magnifying  the 
withholdings  of  the  sovereignty  of  God. 
"  The  set  time  to  favour  Zion  has  not  come,"  some 
say.  "  Pour  out  Thy  Spirit,  O  God,"  others  cry. 
"  Endue  us  with  power,"  pray  many.  And  all  the 
while  God,  who  gave  His  Son  to  die  for  the  world, 
who  longs  to  have  all  men  saved  and  brought  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  who  poured  His  Spirit  upon 
His  Church  at  Pentecost,  who  set  the  face  of  the 
Church  toward  the  outermost  nations,  and  whose 
"  set  time  to  favour  Zion  "  is  now,  always  now,  waits 
with  His  Son,  to  see  of  the  travail  of  His  soul  and  be 
satisfied.  Why  does  He  wait  ?  Who  makes  Him  wait  ? 
His  own  sovereign  will?  Does  He  deny  Himself  the 
consummation  of  the  mission  of  Jesus?  "Ye  would 
not  come  unto  Me,  that  ye  might  have  life,"  said  Jesus. 
Men  kept  themselves  from  life.  And  if  fhe  Church 
is  powerless  to-day,  it  is  not  because  God  is  withhold- 
ing from  her  something  for  which  she  longs,  some- 
thing essential  to  the  evangelization  of  the  world  and 
the  accomplishment  of  the  ends  that  are  dear  beyond 
everything  to  God.  The  want  is  in  her  own  will.  The 
enduement  of  power  is  hers  on  condition  of  obedience. 
It  is  given — waiting  only  to  be  taken.  To  refuse 
obedience  or  to  postpone,  pending  the  receipt  of  an 
equipment  of  whose  reception  obedience  is  the  indis- 
pensable condition  and  the  only  method,  is  a  course  of 
conduct  which  must  impugn  either  our  intelligence  and 

i6 


Common  Honesty  and  Foreign  Missions    17 

serious  thoughtfulness,  or  our  common  honesty.  And 
in  a  matter  of  this  sort,  where  so  much  hangs  upon  the 
issue,  ignorance  or  carelessness  or  frivolous  thought 
may  be  regarded,  perhaps,  as  a  wrong  and  dishonesty. 

I  venture  to  wonder,  therefore,  whether,  after  all, 
the  Church  is  so  anxious  for  an  enduement  of  power; 
whether  when  the  condition  of  securing  it  is  so  plain 
and  yet  so  calmly  ignored,  the  question  of  greatest  im- 
portance may  not  be  Common  Honesty  and  Foreign 
Missions. 

Now  the  Church  should  be  wholly  filled  with  the 
Holy  Ghost.  The  bodies  of  Christians  are  called  by 
St.  Paul  "  Temples  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  "  Know  ye 
not  that  your  body  is  a  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
which  is  in  you  ?  "  "  Know  ye  not  that  ye  are  a 
temple  of  God,  and  that  the  Spirit  of  God  dwelleth  in 
you  ? "  In  a  truer  sense,  even,  the  Church  is  His 
temple.  "  Be  filled  with  the  Spirit."  The  whole  New 
Testament  teaching  regarding  the  indwelling  fulness 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  teaching  revived  in  our  day  in 
the  most  accentuated  individualistic  form,  applies  with 
yet  clearer  propriety  to  the  Church  which  is  Christ's 
body,  the  fulness  of  Him  that  filleth  all  in  all.  For 
the  Church  to  be  barren  of  the  Spirit,  or  to  be  poor 
in  the  Spirit,  is  in  the  nature  of  an  abdication  of  func- 
tion and  life.  To  maintain  the  form  empty  of  the  all- 
enriching  Spirit  is  a  species  of  dishonesty  sure  to  bear 
fruit  in  all  sorts  of  fictions,  deceptions  and  lies.  If 
the  escape  of  this,  and  the  affluent  endowment  of  the 
Church  with  the  power  and  wealth  and  graces  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  are  dependent  upon  obedience  to  the 
great  missionary  commission,  and  are  not  to  be  found 
elsewhere,  howsoever  prayed  for  or  solicited,  surely 
neglect  of  that  commission  may  arouse  in  the  minds  of 
thoughtful  men  serious  inquiry  as  to  the  moral  integ- 


1 8         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

rity  of  any  body  of  intelligent  Christians  guilty  of  such 
neglect. 

'*  Intelligent  Christians,"  I  have  said.  For  there 
was  a  time  when  the  missionary  vision  was  lost,  and 
men,  as  honest  as  Paul  when  he  guarded  the  gar- 
ments of  Stephen's  murderers  or  harried  the  dis- 
ciples near  and  far,  denied  on  this  ground  or  that  the 
missionary  obligation.  "  To  spread  abroad  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  gospel,"  said  Dr.  George  Hamilton,  in  the 
General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  1796, 
"  among  barbarous  and  heathen  nations,  seems  to  me 
highly  preposterous,  in  as  far  as  it  anticipates,  nay,  as 
it  even  reverses,  the  order  of  nature.  Men  must  be 
polished  and  refined  in  their  manners  before  they  can 
be  properly  enlightened  in  religious  truths.  Philoso- 
phy and  learning  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  take 
precedence.  Indeed,  it  should  seem  hardly  less  absurd 
to  make  revelation  precede  civilization  in  the  order 
of  time,  than  to  pretend  to  unfold  to  a  child  the 
'  Principia '  of  Newton,  ere  he  is  made  at  all  acquainted 
with  the  letters  of  the  alphabet.  These  ideas  seem 
to  me  alike  founded  in  error;  and,  therefore,  I  must 
consider  them  both  equally  romantic  and  visionary." 

And  there  are  men  to-day  who,  on  Hamilton's 
ground,  or  on  grounds  of  their  own,  endeavour  to 
escape  the  searching  swing  of  the  last  command  of 
Christ  and  the  missionary  exaction  of  the  expansive 
and  universal  genius  of  Christianity.  It  would  be  un- 
christian and  fatuous  to  impugn  the  sincerity  and  hon- 
esty of  these  men.  It  is  Christian  and  necessary  to 
affirm  that,  at  the  bottom,  the  ground  of  their  hostility 
or  indifference  is  a  want  of  a  high  and  scrupulous 
sense  of  common  honesty. 

For  if  Christ  be  to  us  what  our  Christian  faith  af- 
firms, what  is  the  denial  of  Him  to  the  nations  or  the 


Common  Honesty  and  Foreign  Missions    19 

withholding  of  Him  from  the  nations,  but  the  grossest 
form  of  cruelty  and  wrong?  He  is  the  only  Saviour 
of  men  from  their  sins.  We  declare :  "  There  is 
none  other  Name  given  under  heaven  among  men  by 
which  we  must  be  saved."  We  read  in  our  churches 
and  in  our  homes  out  of  a  Book  we  call  divine.  But  if 
this  is  true,  or  we  believe  it  to  be  true,  the  missionary 
enterprise  follows  as  a  matter  not  of  spiritual  endue- 
ment  or  revival  but  of  simple  honesty.  Christianity 
is  a  religion  of  salvation.  It  claims  to  be  able  to  save 
the  world.  It  claims  that  it  alone  can  save  the  world. 
For  it  to  neglect  to  endeavour  to  do  so,  is  an  abdi- 
cation of  its  pre-eminent  place.  Universality  cannot 
longer  be  acknowledged  to  belong  to  it.  Its  Christ 
shrivels  into  a  little  ethnic  Saviour. 

In  common  honesty,  the  man  who  does  not  feel 
constrained  to  spread  the  knowledge  of  Christ  among 
mankind  should  surrender  Christ  wholly.  What  right 
has  he  to  Christ?  If  Christ  is  not  able  to  save  the 
world.  He  is  not  able  to  save  a  single  soul.  If  He 
can  save  a  soul,  it  is  awful  to  withhold  Him  from  any, 
even  the  lowest.  And  no  soul  can  honourably  claim 
His  power  in  his  behalf,  who  proposes,  when  he  has 
secured  it,  to  let  the  rest  of  mankind  struggle  on  with- 
out the  Saviour  whom  he  believes  to  be  unique  and  in- 
dispensable, but  whom  he  is  content  to  have  obtained 
for  himself  alone 

Or  rather,  for  this  truth  should  be  stated  reversely, 
every  man,  Christian  or  not,  in  a  land  like  ours,  owes 
so  much  to  Christ,  in  the  way  of  personal  salvation, 
renewing  moral  teaching,  holy,  civilizing  power  and 
general  enlightenment,  that  in  common  honestv  he 
ought  to  desire  to  pass  his  blessings  on  to  his  brethren. 
For  Christ  and  all  that  flows  from  Him  is  in  the  nature 
of  a  trust,  vested  in  the  Church  for  the  benefit  of  the 


ao         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

whole  world  and  the  human  race.  To  withhold  from 
men  what  God  has  given,  and  what  is  in  our  hands  as 
trustees  for  all  mankind,  is  what,  to  put  it  candidly, 
men  denounce  as  dishonesty  in  lower  spheres  of  life. 
Can  that  be  tolerable  with  God  that  is  abominable 
with  man? 

We  shall  come  to  the  enduement  of  power  through 
Foreign  Missions.  We  shall  come  to  Foreign  Missions 
through  common  honesty.  A  revival  of  simple, 
square-footed  integrity  is  the  real  missionary  need  of 
our  time  and  of  all  times.  It  is  the  only  need.  God 
adds  all  the  rest. 


Ill 

THE    NEED    OF   THE    NON-CHRISTIAN    WORLD 
FOR  CHRIST 

ESCAPE  for  a  moment  from  the  common  and 
unexamined  notions  of  our  Christian  faith  and 
view  them  with  fresh  and  candid  scrutiny. 
How  instantly  starthng  these  two  questions  be- 
come. Why  should  God  have  sent  His  Son  out  of  His 
presence?  What  would  my  Hfe  be,  stripped  of  Christ? 
Let  us  not  accept  at  once  and  with  only  casual  thought 
the  natural  replies.  Let  us  think  of  God  as  withhold- 
ing His  Son  from  the  world  and  the  life  of  man,  and 
of  the  possibility  of  a  Christless  life  for  ourselves. 
Perhaps  no  one  of  us  can  do  this.  The  mental 
strength,  the  frank,  intellectual  honesty  necessary  for 
it  are  so  rare.  But  if  any  man  can  do  it,  and  justly 
conceive  where  and  what  his  own  life  would  be  with- 
out the  Son  of  God  as  the  light  and  the  Lord  of  it, 
and  the  light  and  the  Lord  of  its  preparation  for  eigh- 
teen centuries,  I  have  already  spoken  my  message  to 
that  man.  As  he  shudders  at  the  thought  of  such  a 
gloom  and  poverty  for  himself,  he  will  remember  that 
the  vast  majority  of  his  fellow-creatures  are  thus  dark 
and  poor. 

Staking  the  chance  of  missionary  sympathy  on  this 
cast  is  hazarding  much.  I  am  aware  of  this.  If  Christ 
means  little  to  a  man,  it  is  natural  that  He  should  be 
judged  of  little  value  to  the  world,  and  that  the  world's 
ignorance  of  Him  should  be  deemed  of  light  account. 
But  if  Christ  mean  much,  as  to  true  men  of  His  Church 
He  must  mean  all,  then  He  must  be  held  to  mean  as 
much  to  the  world  which  He  came  not  to  condemn 

21 


22  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

but  to  save.  That  God  thought  the  world's  need  so 
great  that  He  sent  His  Son  to  be  its  Saviour;  that 
Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord,  so  felt  that  need  that  it  lay  like 
a  woe  upon  His  soul  and  won  His  sacrifice ;  and  that 
the  passing  of  Christ  from  our  life  would  be  as  the 
fall  of  doom, — may  not  one  rest  on  these  grounds,  in 
speaking  to  true  men,  the  appeal  for  the  mission  ?  Our 
loyalty  to  the  mission  is  the  measure  of  our  judgment 
of  the  Son  of  God. 

The  world  needs  the  mission  now.  A  thousand  mil- 
lions of  men,  sinning,  suffering,  struggling,  need  a 
Saviour,  helpful,  tender,  sufficient.  He  came  for  them, 
but  they  have  never  heard  of  Him.  It  is  not  a  matter 
of  speculation  as  to  eternal  destiny.  There  is  a  right- 
eous Judge.  It  is  a  matter  of  present  want  and  ignor- 
ance and  death ;  and  I  speak  not  of  the  Bible's  teach- 
ing as  to  men's  condition,  but  of  actual  fact  and  ex- 
perience. When  Jesus  said,  "  No  man  cometh  unto  the 
Father  but  by  Me."  He  was  not  setting  arbitrary 
limits.  He  was  simply  saying  what  all  history  has 
shown,  and  is  proving  to-day  over  all  the  world,  that 
only  by  Christ  do  men  come  to  the  Father.  In  all  the 
non-Christian  world  Christ's  is  the  only  force  preach- 
ing righteousness,  teaching  purity,  creating  love,  draw- 
ing men  Father-ward.  In  studying  the  non-Christian 
religions  one  wants  to  think  well  of  them,  to  see  the 
best  that  is  in  them.  They  force  the  inevitable  con- 
clusion that  there  is  no  best.  Their  elements  of  truth 
have  been  counteracted  and  distorted  by  their  error. 
Their  original  simplicity  and  fervour  have  died  away 
into  gross  superstition  and  fanaticism.  Their  own 
prophets  condemn  them.  Swami  Vivekananda  has 
recently  told  the  people  of  Madras  what  Buddhism 
became  in  India,  "  The  most  hideous  ceremonies,  the 
most   horrible,   the  most   obscene   books   that   human 


Need  of  the  Non-Christian  World  for  Christ    23 

hands  ever  wrote  or  the  human  brain  ever  conceived, 
the  most  bestial  forms  that  ever  passed  under  the 
name  of  religion,  have  all  been  the  creation  of  de- 
graded Buddhism."  (While  of  Islam,  one  who  was 
not  a  missionary,  but  who  long  lived  among  Moham- 
medans, has  said  with  fullest  charity,  "  There  are  to 
be  found  in  Mohammedan  history  all  the  elements  of 
greatness  in  faith,  courage,  endurance,  self-sacrifice. 
But  enclosed  within  the  narrow  walls  of  a  rude  the- 
ology and  a  barbarous  polity,  from  which  the  capacity 
to  grow  and  the  liberty  to  modify  have  been  sternly 
cut  off,  they  work  no  deliverance  upon  the  earth.  They 
are  strong  only  for  destruction.  When  that  work  is 
over,  they  either  prey  upon  each  other  or  beat  them- 
selves to  death  against  the  bars  of  their  own  prison 
house.  No  permanent  dwelling-place  can  be  erected  on 
a  foundation  of  sand ;  and  no  durable  or  humanizing 
polity  upon  a  foundation  of  fatalism,  despotism,  po- 
lygamy and  slavery."  Even  at  their  best,  their  high- 
est appraisement,  what  are  the  religions  of  the  world? 
If  they  be  lights  at  all,  they  are  but  broken.    Yea, 

"  They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

The  spiritual  insufficiency  of  the  non-Christian  re- 
ligions fills  the  heathen  world  with  dreariness  and 
pathos.  The  memory  of  it  tinges  one's  life  with  sad- 
ness. And  that  sadness  is  quickened  into  indignation 
and  pity  at  the  recollection  of  the  awful  suffering  and 
wrongs  which  are  the  products  of  these  religions. 
There  is  a  superficial  contentment,  and  the  suffering 
of  centuries  has  schooled  the  people  of  the  East  into 
a  quiet,  unresisting  endurance  of  what  they  have  come 
to  regard  as  part  of  their  unavoidable  lot.     And  the 


24         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

men  of  the  East,  if  they  are  not  masters  of  their  own 
suffering,  are  at  least  masters  of  the  suffering  of 
others,  and  so  it  bears  not  so  heavily  on  them.  But 
the  women  and  children  of  the  East  are  the  ones  who 
wait  for  the  mission,  and  who  need  its  coming.  The 
judgment  of  their  need,  which  one  of  Mr.  Kipling's 
creations  expresses  of  India,  is  not  too  severe : 
"  What's  the  matter  with  this  country  is  not  in  the  least 
political,  but  an  all  around  entanglement  of  political, 
social  and  moral  evils  and  corruptions,  all  more  or  less 
due  to  the  unnatural  treatment  of  women.  You  can't 
gather  figs  from  thistles ;  and  so  long  as  the  system  of 
infant  marriage,  the  prohibition  of  the  re-marriage  of 
widows,  the  life-long  imprisonment  of  wives  in  a 
worse  than  penal  imprisonment,  and  the  withhold- 
ing from  them  of  any  kind  of  education  or  treat- 
ment as  rational  beings  continues,  the  country  can- 
not advance  a  step.  Half  of  it  is  morally  dead,  and 
worse  than  dead,  and  that  is  just  the  half  from  which 
we  have  a  right  to  look  for  the  best  impulses.  It  is 
right  here  where  the  trouble  is,  and  not  in  any  po- 
litical considerations  whatsoever.  The  foundations  of 
their  life  are  rotten — utterly,  bestially  rotten.  The 
men  talk  of  their  rights  and  privileges.  I  have 
seen  the  women  that  bore  these  very  men;  and  again 
— may  God  forgive  the  men !  " 

The  mission  now  depends  upon  men.  Christ  com- 
mitted it  to  them.  He  launched  it  and  went  away,  say- 
ing as  He  went,  not  to  apostles  only,  but  to  all  His 
disciples,  "  Bear  it  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth." 
We  have  not  borne  it.  Saints,  martyrs  and  heroes 
have  given  their  lives  to  it,  but  we  have  not  borne  it. 
To  what  extent  are  our  lives  now  committed  to  it? 
Four  hundred  millions  of  our  fellow  creatures  in 
China,  three  hundred  millions  in   India,  one  hundred 


Need  of  the  Non-Christian  World  for  Christ    25 

and  forty  million  Mohammedans  outside  of  India,  and 
millions  of  men  in  other  lands  are  ignorant  that  the 
mission  has  come — the  mission  of  the  Father's  revela- 
tion in  the  Son  to  all.     They  wait  for  it. 

"  The  restless  millions  wait 
The  light  whose  dawning 
Maketh  all  things  new : 
Christ  also  waits. 
But  men  arc  slow  and  late. 
Have  we  done  what  we  could? 
Have  I  ?    Have  you  ?  " 

If  Christ  is  our  life,  and  we  have  been  able  to  find 
liie7~Tiill  and  abundant,  only  in  Him ;  if  there  is  no 
other  name  given  under  heaven  among  men  whereby 
they  must  be  saved ;  if,  as  Keith  Falconer  said,  "  vast 
continents  are  shrouded  in  almost  utter  darkness,  and 
hundreds  of  millions  suffer  the  horrors  of  heathenism 
or  of  Islam ;  "  if  the  Saviour  of  the  world  included 
these  millions  in  the  sweep  of  His  love  and  sacrifice; 
if  they  are  the  children  of  the  Father  who  would  not 
that  any  should  perish,  but  that  all  should  enter  into 
life,  and  for  that  end  has  made  us  the  stewards  of  the 
mission ;  and  if  life  is  to  us  not  a  play  and  a  trifle,  but 
the  solemn  doing  of  our  Father's  business,  then  I  ask, 
in  the  Master's  name,  Is  there  not  need  that  we  give 
ourselves  to  the  mission  of  the  world's  redemption? 

"  I  came  not  to  condemn,  but  to  save  the  world." 
"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world."  "  The  bread  which 
I  will  give  is  my  flesh  for  the  life  of  the  world."  "  Go 
ye  into  all  the  world."  So  Jesus  spoke.  To  minister 
Him  to  the  world,  not  to  a  parish,  a  state,  a  nation 
only,  but  to  the  world,  that  is  the  mission.  Truly  as 
He  is  our  Lord,  we  the  men  of  His  Church  are  His 


26         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

brethren  and  servants  in  all  His  sympathies  and  serv- 
ices, and  we  must  hunger  for  the  world's  redemption 
as  He  hungered  for  it,  and  look  out  upon  its  woes 
and  want  with  His  pity,  and  work  for  it  with  a  love 
of  sacrifice  like  His.  As  the  God  of  the  wide  salva- 
tion is  our  God,  the  God  of  our  heart  and  will,  the 
mission  of  the  world's  salvation,  must  be  our  life  and 
passion. 


IV 


WHAT  ARE   CHRISTIAN   MISSIONARIES  TRYING 
TO  DO? 

1 4  "W  "^  7  H Y  do  you  send  missionaries  to  these 
%  /\  I  people,  anyway  ?  "  asked  the  reporter. 
%/  %/  He  had  come  into  my  office  for  news 
'  '  about  China,  and  then,  apologizing  for 
the  directness  of  his  question  by  saying  that  he  really 
was  interested  to  know  what  our  reasons  were,  he 
asked  why  the  missionary  boards  sent  these  people 
out  to  foreign  lands.  I  explained  to  him  that  it  was 
the  churches,  not  the  boards,  that  sent  them,  that  the 
boards  were  merely  the  agencies  of  the  churches,  and 
that  the  movement  of  which  the  missionaries  were  the 
principal  agents  lay  imbedded  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
Christian  Church  and  of  Christianity  itself.  "  But 
these  people  have  their  own  customs  and  opinions," 
said  the  reporter.  "  Why  do  you  go  to  disturb  them  ? 
And  as  to  morals,  they  are  no  worse  than  New  York. 
I  have  been  in  South  Africa,"  he  continued,  "  and 
those  black  people  were  faithful  in  their  family  re- 
lationships, and  their  women  were  careful.  No,"  he 
replied  in  answer  to  my  question,  "  they  were  not  ex- 
actly married,  and  they  separated  when  they  wanted 
to  without  the  bother  of  a  divorce  court;  but  there 
wasn't  any  such  immorality  as  there  is  right  here.  And 
look  at  China;  she's  a  settled,  civilized  country.  Why 
do  you  send  missionaries  there  ?  " 

Well,  why  do  we  send  them?  To  say  that  Christ 
commanded  it  only  raises  the  question,  Why  did  He 
command  it?  And  it  is  altogether  right  to  ask  this, 
for  it  was  not  Christ's  way  to  issue  arbitrary  orders 
without  clear  and  justifying  reasons  for  them  which 

27 


28  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

made  convincing  appeal  to  the  moral  nature  of 
man. 

We  do  not  send  Christian  missionaries  to  clothe  the 
heathen  or  to  alter  their  style  of  dress.  In  China  the 
women  dress  more  modestly  and  sensibly  than  ours 
do,  though  not  so  cleanly.  Elsewhere  the  women  do 
not  dress  so  properly,  and  there  are  many  improve- 
ments resulting  from  missionary  influences,  but  the 
missionaries  do  not  go  out  as  dress  reformers. 

We  do  not  send  missionaries  to  improve  the  indus- 
trial conditions  of  Asia  and  Africa.  They  have  intro- 
duced American  fruits  in  Northern  China  and  Ameri- 
can vegetables  in  many  lands.  They  have  taught  new 
industries  to  thousands  of  boys  and  girls  in  India  and 
Africa,  and  have  improved  the  native  industries  every- 
where. But  our  missionaries  would  not  have  gone 
simply  to  accomplish  these  ends. 

Nor  do  the  missionaries  go  out  to  reform  politics. 
In  spite  of  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  and  other  pub- 
licists whose  generalizations  exceed  in  ambitiousness 
the  accuracy  and  extent  of  their  particular  knowledge 
of  facts,  it  may  be  maintained  that  it  was  Christianity, 
whether  through  the  missionaries  or  not  is  of  little  con- 
sequence, that  has  transformed  Japan.  And  when  it 
suits  some  political  writers  to  make  missions  a  scape- 
goat for  the  troubles  in  China,  or  to  hide  their  own 
follies  or  misdeeds  by  mud-flinging  at  missionaries, 
the  only  class  of  people  whose  record  for  righteous- 
ness and  sympathy  in  China  is  clean,  we  are  told  that 
the  reform  movement  of  the  young  Emperor  was  due 
to  missionaries.  Both  Japan  and  China  have  been 
profoundly  shaped  politically  by  missions,  and  India 
perhaps  even  more.  "  No  person  can  be  more  anxious 
to  promote  the  spread  of  Christianity  in  India  than  we 
are,"  said  Viscount  Halifax,  when  Secretary  of  State 


V 


What  are  Missionaries  Trying  to  Do  ?      29 

for  India.  "  Independently  of  Christian  considerations, 
I  believe  that  every  additional  Christian  in  India  is 
an  additional  bond  of  union  with  this  country  and  an 
additional  source  of  strength  to  the  Empire."  But 
the  missionaries  are  not  political  propagandists.  They 
do  not  go  out  for  the  purpose  of  turning  monarchies 
into  republics,  far  less  to  turn  independent  states  into 
dependencies  upon  European  or  American  govern- 
ments. 

And,  again,  we  do  not  send  missionaries  to  reform 
morals  or  check  social  abuses.  There  is  abundant 
room  for  such  work.  My  friend,  the  reporter,  erred 
in  his  supposed  facts.  Christian  lands  are  infinitely 
cleaner,  morally,  than  other  lands.  Where  every  man 
may  have  a  private  brothel  under  the  forms  of  law  as 
in  Mohammedan  lands,  and  call  it  his  family ;  or  where 
divorce  is  so  easy  that  it  becomes  the  end  of  one  out  of 
every  three  marriages,  as  in  Japan ;  or  where  polygamy 
and  divorce  are  both  unnecessary  because  of  a  general 
moral  rottenness,  as  in  India,  there  is  no  localization  of 
vice  or  such  sharp  line  between  it  and  virtue  as  makes 
the  immorality  of  Christian  lands  stand  out  so  start- 
lingly.  In  quantity  and  heinousness  the  moral  evils 
of  heathenism  are  worse  than  the  moral  evils 
of  Christendom.  But  beyond  this,  the  worst  vice  of 
Asia  exists  under  the  shadow  and  sanction  of  religion. 
In  America  it  is  in  the  face  and  against  the  protest 
of  religion.  The  foulest  cities  of  Asia  are  the  holiest 
— Mecca,  Meshed  and  Benares.  And  some  of  its  sa- 
cred books  are  most  intolerable.  It  is  true  of  one  of  the 
sacred  accounts  of  the  greatest  Hindu  god  that  it  is  so 
indecent  that  the  British  Government  has  forbidden  its 
translation.  But  morality  is  merely  the  product  of  the 
inner  life,  and  missionaries  do  not  go  to  heathen  lands 
to  try  to  amend  behaviour,  any  more  than  a  husband- 


30  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

man  regards  it  as  sane  horticulture  to  go  out  and  tie 
fruit  on  the  hmbs  of  his  trees.  His  aim  is  to  make  the 
trees  produce  the  fruit. 

Now  it  does  not  affect  the  truth  of  what  has  been 
said  to  allege  that  the  missionaries  do  interest  them- 
selves in  the  physical  and  moral  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  that  they  do  introduce  changes  of  dress  and 
industry  and  medical  treatment,  and  that  their  work 
does  spread  enlightenment  and  make  the  people  dis- 
contented with  ignorance,  injustice,  tyranny  and 
wrong.  All  these  things  result  from  the  missionary 
work,  because  the  missionary  goes  out  to  sow  the  seed 
of  the  plant  of  which  these  are  the  leaf  and  flower 
and  fruit. 

The  primary  business  of  the  missionary  is  a  re- 
ligious business.  Missions  are  the  product  of  the  con- 
viction that  Christianity  is  a  divine  life  in  man,  and 
that  every  Christian  is  different  from  other  men,  not 
in  this  or  that  external,  but  in  the  fact  that  he  is  alive 
and  other  men  are  dead.  The  Church  may  have  be- 
come so  much  like  the  world  as  to  have  lost  sight 
of  this  truth,  but  the  New  Testament  is  falsehood  and 
delusion  if  there  is  not  in  the  Christian  the  power  of 
a  supernatural  life  which  is  absent  from  the  non- 
Christian.  It  is  to  give  men  that  life  that  the  Church 
sends  out  missionaries,  and  all  kinds  of  accessory  and 
blessed  consequences  flow  from  missionary  work  be- 
cause the  life  of  Christ  planted  in  men  cannot  be  re- 
strained from  producing  such  results. 

This  is  what  Christian  missionaries  are  trying  to  do. 
Men  may  say  they  are  trying  to  proselytize,  if  they 
wish  to  say  so.  But  proselytizing  with  Christians  is 
not  the  attempt  to  lead  men  to  change  their  opinions 
or  their  mode  of  worship.  It  is  an  attempt  at  resur- 
rection.    The  missionary  is  taking  life  to  dead  men, 


What  are  Missionaries  Trying  to  Do?      31 

and  life,  not  in  the  sense  of  quickened  intellectual 
movement  or  refined  moral  taste,  but  in  a  supernat- 
ural sense.  Christianity  is  a  personal  divine  life  dwell- 
ing in  the  lives  of  men.  In  this  matter  Christianity 
refuses  to  be  classed  with  other  religions.  It  will  ad- 
mit that  there  is  good  in  them.  But  it  charges  evil 
there  and  denies  it  in  itself.  It  recognizes  truth  in 
them.  But  it  charges  falsehood  there  and  denies  it  in 
itself.  And  the  good  that  is  in  them  it  claims  for  itself, 
and  also  exemption  from  all  their  evils  and  error.  Yet 
this  is  a  trifling  part  of  its  claims.  It  asserts  that  they 
are  only  systems.  It  is  a  life.  They  are  dead.  It  is 
quick  with  divine  presence.  God  is  in  it  in  a  sense 
above  and  beyond  the  sense  in  which  he  is  everywhere 
and  ruling  all  things. 

Of  course,  this  is  fanaticism  in  the  eye  of  the  mod- 
ern world.  But  it  is  not  the  fanaticism  of  missions 
only.  It  is  the  essential  character  and  claim  of  Chris- 
tianity. To  the  extent  that  Christianity  at  home  abates 
or  betrays  this  claim  it  is  untrue  to  itself,  and  it  sur- 
renders its  power. 

Missionaries  and  their  supporters  may  lose  sight  of 
their  true  aim  and  duty.  Political  or  philanthropic  or 
social  motives  may  be  dominant  with  thetn.  It  is  not 
wrong  to  be  touched  with  sympathy  for  the  famine 
orphans  of  India,  or  the  child-wives  of  Moslem  harems, 
or  the  sick  and  uncared-for  sufferers  of  many  lands. 
But  such  sympathy  is  wise  and  discriminating  when 
it  does  not  content  itself  with  relieving  the  symptoms 
merely,  but  strikes  at  the  disease.  To  give  all  the  sick 
people  in  China  to-day  the  benefit  of  Western  medical 
science  would  be  a  purely  temporary  measure.  The 
missionary  theory  is  to  plant  in  the  Chinese  people 
those  principles  of  life  which  will  bear  their  fruitage 
in   such   sympathies  and  ministries  in   China  and  in- 


32         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

digenous    thereto     as     now     bless    every      Christian 
land. 

There  may  easily  be  waste  or  comparatively  un- 
profitable expenditure  of  life  and  toil  in  missionary 
effort  through  our  failure  to  discern  true  principles. 
Philanthropic  and  educational  work  are  worth  while 
as  they  help  to  plant  deep  in  the  life  of  individuals  and 
nations  the  supernatural  life  of  Christianity.  If 
they  merely  ripple  the  surface  of  social  life,  or  end 
in  comfort  or  clothes  or  cleanliness,  they  serve  a  not 
useless  purpose ;  but  they  are  not  in  line  with  the  real 
work  of  missions,  which  is  the  lodgment  in  human 
life  of  the  supernatural  life  of  Christ. 
/  Whenever  men  believe  in  Christianity  as  a  unique 
y  (  supernatural  life,  they  will  go  out  into  the  world  with 
\it.  When  they  don't,  they  won't.  My  reporter  friend 
was  a  heathen,  alike  in  his  knowledge  and  in  his  ex- 
perience of  Christianity.  He  did  not  know  what  it 
was.  Neither  books  nor  men  nor  his  own  heart  had 
told  him.  To  such  a  man  Christian  missions  will  nat- 
urally appear  unintelligible.  And  there  are  many 
such  in  the  Church.  The  fact  that  they  do  not  thrill 
with  the  missionary  spirit  shows  that  they  do  not 
understand  what  Christianity  is. 

What  Christian  missions  are  trying  to  do  is  the 
direct  and  necessary  consequence  of  this  view  of 
Christianity.  Of  course  if  Christianity  is  not  this,  but 
merely  a  moral  system,  finer  than  the  moral  systems 
of  other  religions  and  richer  by  the  superior  wonder 
and  admiration  which  Jesus  has  awakened,  but,  after 
all,  the  .same  in  kind  as  they,  indiflference  to  its  exten- 
sion is  intelligible — and  also  indifference  to  its  accept- 
ance. A  religion  that  is  not  so  good  that  all  the  world 
ought  to  have  it,  is  not  so  good  that  any  one  man  must 
have  it.     But  if  Christianity  is  what  the  New  Testa- 


What  are  Missionaries  Trying  to  Do  ?     23 

ment  represents,  and  the  experience  of  millions  of 
Christians  proves,  it  is  the  business  of  all  who  have 
received  it  to  support  the  missionaries  who  are  trying, 
not  to  bear  this  or  that  fruit  of  Christianity  to  heathen 
lands,  but  to  plant  there  its  roots,  that  they  may  pro- 
duce among  each  people  the  living  works  of  God. 


V 


THE  AIM  OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS* 

IT  is  the  aim  of  foreign  missions  that  is  to  be  de- 
fined, and  not  the  aim  of  the  Christian  Church  in 
the  world,  or  of  the  Christian  nations  of  the  world. 
There  are  many  good  and  Christian  things  which 
it  is  not  the  duty  of  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise 
to  do.  Some  things  are  to  be  laid,  from  the  beginning, 
upon  the  shoulders  of  the  new  Christians ;  some  are  to 
be  left  to  be  discharged  in  due  time  by  the  native 
Christian  churches  that  shall  arise,  and  there  are  many 
blessings,  political,  commercial  and  philanthropic, 
which  the  Christian  nations  owe  to  the  heathen  world 
which  are  not  to  be  paid  through  the  enterprise  of  for- 
eign missions.  It  is  the  aim  of  a  distinctive,  specific 
movement  that  we  are  to  consider. 

It  will  help  us  in  defining  it  to  remind  ourselves,  for 
one  thing,  that  we  must  not  confuse  the  aim  of  foreign 
missions  with  the  results  of  foreign  missions.  There  is 
no  force  in  the  world  so  powerful  to  accomplish  acces- 
sory results  as  the  work  of  missions.  Wherever  it  goes 
it  plants  in  the  hearts  of  men  forces  that  produce  new 
lives ;  it  plants  among  communities  of  men,  forces  that 
create  new  social  combinations.  It  is  impossible  that 
any  human  tyranny  should  live  where  Jesus  Christ  is 
King. 

All  these  things  the  foreign  mission  movement  ac- 
complishes; it  does  not  aim  to  accomplish  them.  I 
read  in  a  missionary  paper  a  little  while  ago  that  the 
foreign  mission  that  was  to  accomplish  results  of  per- 
manent value,  must  aim  at  the  total  reorganization  of 

*  An  address  before  the  Ecumenical  Missionary  Conference 
in  New  York,  April  23,  1900. 

34 


The  Aim  of  Christian  Missions  35 

the  whole  social  fabric.  This  is  a  mischievous  doc- 
trine. We  learn  nothing  from  human  history,  from 
the  experience  of  the  Christian  Church,  from  the  ex- 
ample of  our  Lord  and  His  apostles  to  justify  it.  They 
did  not  aim  directly  at  such  an  end.  They  were  con- 
tent to  aim  at  implanting  the  life  of  Christ  in  the  hearts 
of  men,  and  were  willing  to  leave  the  consequences  to 
the  care  of  God.  It  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  charge 
ourselves  openly  before  the  world  with  the  aim  of  re- 
organizing states  and  reconstructing  society.  How 
long  could  the  missions  live  in  the  Turkish  Empire  or 
the  native  States  of  India  that  openly  proclaimed  their 
aim  to  be  the  political  reformation  of  the  lands  to 
which  they  went?  It  is  misleading  also,  as  Dr.  Beh- 
rends  once  declared,  to  confuse  the  ultimate  issues 
with  the  immediate  aims ;  and  it  is  not  only  mislead- 
ing, it  is  fatal.  Some  things  can  only  be  secured  by 
those  who  do  not  seek  them.  Missions  are  powerful  to 
transform  the  face  of  society,  because  they  ignore  the 
face  of  society,  and  deal  with  it  at  its  heart.  They 
yield  such  powerful  political  and  social  results,  be- 
cause they  do  not  concern  themselves  with  them. 

It  will  help  us  also  to  remind  ourselves  that  we  must 
not  confuse  the  aims  of  missions  with  the  methods  of 
missions.  It  is  an  easy  thing  to  select  a  method  with 
the  view  to  the  accomplishment  of  some  given  end.  and 
then  because  the  end  is  difficult  of  accomplishment, 
because  the  method  is  easy  of  operation,  because  its 
results,  apart  altogether  from  the  main  aim,  are  pleas- 
ant and  useful  in  themselves,  it  is  easy  to  exalt  the 
method  into  the  place  of  the  end.  Have  not  many 
of  us  seen  this  in  philanthropic  work  on  the  mission 
field?  It  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  feed  the  hungry,  it  is 
a  Christian  thing  to  heal  the  sick ;  and  many  times  have 
we  not  with  a  view  to  attaining  our  direct  missionary 


36  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

aim,  launched  these  philanthropic  agencies,  only  to  see 
them  in  due  time  absorb  our  aim  itself,  and  demand 
our  support  for  their  own  sakes,  irrespective  of  the 
relation  which  they  bear  to  the  supreme  aim?  Have 
we  not  seen  this  happen  in  mission  schools?  We 
establish  a  school  with  a  view  to  the  realization 
of  our  aim ;  the  aim  becomes  a  difficult  thing ;  the 
maintenance  of  the  school  is  an  easy  thing.  It  is  a 
good  and  civilizing  thing  in  itself,  and  by  and  by  we 
sacrifice  for  the  lesser  good,  the  greater  aim.  Our 
method  rises  up  into  the  place  of  our  end,  and  appro- 
priates to  its  support  for  its  own  sake,  that  which  the 
aim  had  a  right  to  claim  should  be  zealously  and 
jealously  devoted  to  it  for  the  aim's  sake  alone.  And 
yet  once  again,  have  we  not  seen  the  same  thing 
happen  in  our  preaching?  We  have  adopted  certain 
methods  of  preaching  the  gospel,  with  a  view  to  the 
attainment  of  our  aim ;  and  long  after  those  methods 
have  been  shown  to  be  fruitless,  long  after  they  had 
been  condemned  by  experience,  we  have  kept  them  up 
through  sheer  force  of  their  own  momentum,  for  their 
own  sake,  irrespective  of  any  direct  and  fruitful  bear- 
ing they  had  upon  the  realization  of  our  supreme  aim. 
Let  us  once  and  for  all  distinguish  in  our  minds  be- 

I  tween  the  aim  of  missions  and  the  results  and  methods 

I.  of  missions. 

Having  cleared  the  ground  so  far,  what  is  the  aim  of 
foreign  missions.  For  one  thing,  it  is  a  religious  aim.  / 
We  cannot  state  too  strongly  in  an  age  when  the 
thought  of  men  is  full  of  things,  and  the  body  has 
crept  up  on  the  throne  of  the  soul,  that  our  work  is 
not  immediately  and  in  itself  a  philanthropic  work,  a 
political  work,  a  secular  work  of  any  sort  whatsoever. 
It  is  a  spiritual  and  a  religious  work.  Of  course  re- 
ligion must  express  itself  in  life,  but  religion  is  spirit- 


The  Aim  of  Christian  Missions  37 

ual  life.  I  had  rather  plant  one  seed  of  the  life  of 
Christ  under  the  crust  of  heathen  life,  than  cover  that 
whole  crust  over  with  the  veneer  of  our  social  habits, 
or  the  vestiture  of  Western  civilization.  We  go  into 
the  world  not  primarily  as  trustees  of  a  better  social 
life.  We  go  as  the  trustees  of  His  life,  Who  said  of 
Himself,  "  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man, 
and  drink  His  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you."  "  I  came 
that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it  more  abund- 
antly." "  The  bread  which  I  will  give  is  My  flesh, 
which  I  will  give  for  the  life  of  the  world."  What- 
ever defects  may  be  found  in  President  Seelye's  lec- 
tures on  Christian  Missions,  this  merit  they  have  and 
always  will  have,  that  they  lay  an  emphasis  which  can- 
not be  shaken,  on  the  predominance  of  the  religious 
and  spiritual  character  of  the  aim  of  missions. 

The  aim  of  missions,  to  borrow  Dr.  Washburn's  }^ 
phrase,  is  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world. 
You  can  adopt  other  phraseology  if  you  please.  You 
can  say  the  aim  of  missions  is  the  evangelization  of  the 
world.  Or,  you  can  say  the  aim  of  missions  is  to 
preach  the  gospel  to  the  world.  And  if  we  under- 
stand these  terms  in  their  scriptural  sense,  they  are 
synonymous  with  the  phrase  which  I  have  just  quotedr 
But  many  of  us  will  persist  in  using  them  at  less  or 
more  than  their  scriptural  value.  And  to  make  per- 
fectly clear  what  the  aim  of  missions  is,  I  paraphrase 
them  in  these  other  words :  The  aim  of  foreign  misr  — 
sions  is  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world. 

And  almost  any  method,  almost  any  agency  may 
be  recognized  as  legitimate  which  subjects  itself  with 
uttter  fidelity  to  this  supreme  aim.  As  Alexander 
Duff  said  years  ago,  in  the  first  Missionary  Conference 
in  New  York  city,  "  The  chief  means  of  divine  ap- 
pointment for  the  evangelization  of  the  world  are  the 


38         Missionary  Prmr'  nd  Practice 

faithful  teaching  and  pi\;  f  the  pure  gospel  of 

salvation,  by  duly  quah^"  iters  and  other  holy 

and  consistent  disciples  )rd  Jesus  Christ,  ac- 

companied with  prayei,  unu  savingly  applied  by  the 
grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit;  such  means,  in  the  providen- 
tial application  of  them  by  human  agency,  embracing 
not  merely  instruction  by  the  living  voice,  but  the 
translation  and  judicious  circulation  of  the  whole  writ- 
ten Word  of  God,  the  preparation  and  circulation  of 
evangelical  tracts  and  books,  as  well  as  any  other  in- 
strumentalities fitted  to  bring  the  Word  of  God  home 
to  men's  souls,  together  with  any  processes  which  ex- 
perience may  have  sanctioned  as  the  most  efficient  in 
raising  up  everywhere  indigenous  ministers  and  teach- 
ers of  the  living  gospel."  I  call  that  fair  and  broad. 
It  sets  out  openly  a  range  of  mission  effort  that  will 
throttle  and  restrict  no  useful  missionary  enterprise, 
and  it  exalts  to  a  predominant  and  royal  place  the  su- 
preme end  of  making  Jesus  Christ  known  to  His  world. 
I  choose  this  language  because  it  does  not  lift  off 
our  shoulders  the  burden  of  responsibility  that  we  can- 
not escape,  and  it  does  not  lay  there  a  burden  of  re- 
sponsibility that  we  cannot  bear.  We  dare  not  say 
that  we  have  done  our  duty  when  we  have  spoken 
Christ's  name  to  the  world ;  or  that  we  have  made 
Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world  when  we  have  given 
the  world  such  a  proclamation  of  Christ  as  would  suf- 
fice for  us  who  already  know  Him,  to  take  in  the  full 
meaning  of  that  message.  Neither,  on  the  other  hand, 
dare  any  man  tell  us  that  we  are  to  struggle  hopeless 
under  the  burden  of  the  world's  conversion.  We  can- 
not convert  one  single  soul ;  how  shall  we  convert  the 
world?  Yet,  midway  between  the  position  of  no  re- 
sponsibility, and  of  all  responsibility,  we  stand  sharing 
something  with  God,  sharing  also  something  with  our 


The  Aim  of  Christian  Missions  39 

brethren  of  the  world.  We  cannot  sever  ourselves 
from  that  link  of  loving  sympathy  which  binds  us  to 
their  death ;  we  cannot  sever  ourselves  from  that  link 
of  sympathy  which  binds  us  to  His  life.  We  are  meant 
to  be  between  His  life  and  their  death,  channels  of 
the  grace  and  salvation  of  God. 

The  aim  of  missions  is  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known 
to  the  world  with  a  view  to  the  salvation  of  men,  for 
that  eternity  which  embraces  alike  the  time  that  is  to 
come,  and  the  time  that  now  is.  We  cannot  narrow 
salvation  to  but  one  world,  this  one  or  the  next.  And 
yet  even  so  I  have  not  exhausted  the  statement  of  our 
real  aim.  It  is  not  a  purely  individualistic  gospel  with 
which  we  are  charged.  Our  duty  lies  certainly  to  our 
generation,  but  it  does  not  stop  there.  We  are  bound 
to  preach  to  every  person  in  the  world  the  gospel  that 
Christ  is  his  Saviour;  we  are  bound  also  to  make 
known  to  the  world  that  there  is  a  body  of  Christ, 
which  is  His  Church,  and  to  gather  up  these  saved 
men  into  visible  churches,  which  sh^ll  be  outward  evi- 
dence of  the  body  of  Christ,  and  shall  secure  to  the 
gospel  an  influence  and  perpetuity  which  institutions 
and  not  individuals  must  supply.  We  owe  it  to  Henry 
Venn,  one  of  the  strongest  minds  that  has  ever  worked 
on  this  missionary  problem,  we  owe  it  to  Dr.  Warneck, 
to  Rufus  Anderson,  that  this  element  in  missionary 
policy  and  duty  has  been  properly  emphasized.  It  is 
our  duty  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world  for 
the  salvation  of  individual  men ;  and  it  is  our  duty  also, 
to  gather  these  men  into  the  institutions  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church, — a  Christian  Church  which  in  every  land 
shall  be  that  which  the  Christian  Church  as  estab- 
lished by  the  apostles  was  in  the  early  centuries,  that 
which  the  Christian  Church  has  become  through  mis- 
sionarv  effort  in  the  land   from  which  we  ourselves 


40         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

come.  We  are  to  establish  and  foster  native  churches, 
self-extending,  self-maintaining,  self-directing,  which 
shall  carry  out  to  their  own  people,  whom  we  may  not 
reach,  the  message  that  has  come  to  them,  and  shall 
carry  down  into  the  generations  that  are  to  come  after 
Ihem,  the  blessings  which  we  have  given  them  as  their 
own.  This  is  the  aim  of  foreign  missions,  to  make 
Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world,  v^^ith  a  view  to  the 
full  salvation  of  men,  and  their  gathering  into  true 
and  living  churches  in  the  fields  to  which  we  go. 

And  this  is  our  supreme  aim.  It  is  a  just  thing  to 
challenge  the  world  to  sympathy  with  missions,  because 
of  the  philanthropic  and  social  results  that  missions 
achieve,  and  the  heroic  spirit  which  they  display.  But 
our  supreme  aim  is  neither  to  establish  republics  or  lim- 
ited monarchies  throughout  the  world,  nor  to  lead  Chi- 
nese or  Hindu  people  to  wear  our  dress,  nor  to  remodel 
their  social  institutions  where  these  are  already  whole- 
some and  clean.  Our  supreme  aim  is  to  make  Jesus 
Christ  known.  I  make  room  in  my  view  of  the  world 
for  other  forces  than  ours.  I  believe  that  God 
is  King,  and  that  as  surely  as  His  hand  is  upon 
ns  to-day,  and  upon  the  work  of  missions,  it 
is  upon  all  the  great  forces  that  are  making  this 
world.  We  will  not  acknowledge  that  the  force 
of  political  influence  has  escaped  from  His  control, 
that  ?[e  stands  impotent  before  the  commerce  and  civ- 
ilization of  the  world  ?  I  believe  that  His  hand  is  upon 
these  things,  that  they  play  at  last  into  His  mighty 
purposes,  that  they  are  but  part  of  His  tremendous  in- 
fluence, that  they  and  all  the  forces  of  life  do  but  run 
resistlessly  on  to  the  great  goals  of  God.  But,  I  be- 
lieve also  that  these  things  are  but  as  chaff  before  the 
wind,  are  but  as  "  the  fading  dews  of  the  morning  be- 
fore the  roaring  floods,"  compared  with  the  power  that 


The  Aim  of  Christian  Missions  41 

we  hold  in  our  hands  from  His  pierced  hand,  who 
died  and  rose  again  and  who  is  King  of  them  that 
reign  as  kings,  and  Lord  of  them  that  rule  as  lords. 
This  is  the  supreme  aim  of  Christian  missions. 

It  is  also  its  determining  aim.  And  once  again  we 
must  confess  that  we  have  lost  sight,  too  often  and 
too  sadly,  of  the  determining  character  of  our  mission 
aim.  We  have  sometimes  allowed  ourselves  to  drift 
into  methods  of  work  that  presuppose  a  quite  con- 
trary aim.  When  we  lift  off  the  shoulders  of  a  new 
native  church,  for  example,  the  burdens  that  it  must 
bear,  if  it  is  ever  to  grow,  we  think  we  are  dealing 
kindly,  while  we  are  taking  its  life  and  are  false  to 
our  supreme  aim.  It  is  easy  to  slip  into  indirect  con- 
ceptions of  our  duty,  to  do  what  God  can  do  through 
other  agencies.  We  are  here  to  do  our  own  work,  and 
not  other  people's  work,  or  the  work  of  other  agencies 
or  other  forces.  Our  methods  of  work,  in  their  pro- 
portion, in  their  perpetuation,  should  be  ruled  as  with 
an  iron  hand  by  the  supreme  and  determining  aim  of 
our  work. 

And  not  alone  the  method  of  missions  must  be 
brought  into  utter  subjection  to  their  supreme  and  de- 
termining aim,  but  our  spirit  and  the  spirit  of  the  en- 
terprise must  be  ruled  by  that  aim.  We  propose  for 
ourselves  no  promiscuous  and  indefinite  project;  we 
have  set  before  ourselves,  sharp,  distinct  and  clear,  the 
aim  and  purpose  that  have  been  given  us  to  pursue. 
We  have  our  own  clean  piece  of  work  to  do,  and  with 
a  spirit  as  clear  as  our  work,  fruitful  in  resource, 
persistent  in  purpose,  indomitable  in  will,  we  are  to 
go  out,  our  spirit  ruled  as  well  as  our  plans  by  the  aim 
and  purpose  of  the  work  that  has  been  committed  to 
us  by  our  Lord. 

Those  who  in  the  Christian  Churches  at  home  are 


42         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

responsible  for  this  enterprise,  are  not  summoning  the 
Christian  Church  to  any  miscellaneous  and  undefined 
task.  They  are  calling  it  to  a  project  plain,  clear, 
simple,  practical,  calling  it  to  take  up  that  project  and 
press  it  to  complete  success,  by  all  the  appeals  alike 
of  the  world's  need,  and  of  the  world's  God.  The 
Church  could  do  the  work  if  she  would,  if  this  aim  ruled 
her  spirit.  It  was  in  1836,  I  believe,  that  at  its  annual 
meeting  in  Hartford,  the  American  Board  voted,  that, 
in  view  of  the  signs  of  the  times  and  the  promises  of 
God,  the  day  had  arrived  to  undertake  a  scheme  of 
operations  looking  toward  the  evangelization  of  the 
world,  based  upon  the  expectation  of  its  speedy  ac- 
complishment. Sixty-six  years  have  rolled  by  since 
then.  The  promises  of  God  have  not  been  abrogated. 
Each  passing  year  has  only  given  them  fresh  authen- 
tication, has  only  touched  with  new  hope  and  glory,  the 
signs  of  the  times.  We  stand  to-day  before  these 
same  promises,  vindicated  by  two  generations  more  of 
trial,  face  to  face  with  an  open  and  appealing  world. 
Has  not  the  time  now  come  at  last,  for  action,  for  great 
action,  for  a  serious  attempt  by  the  whole  Church  to 
attain  our  aim?  Would  that  the  voice  of  God  might 
speak  in  the  days  of  this  generation,  sounding  such  a 
rally  to  the  Cross,  and  the  last  command-  of  Jesus 
Christ,  as  by  the  blessing  of  God  before  we  die,  should 
fling  the  gospel  light  around  the  world. 


VI 

THE  SCIENCE  OF  MISSIONS 

OF  the  impressions  with  which  any  thought- 
ful traveller  comes  back  from  the  mission 
fields  three  especially  stand  forth  when  he 
thinks  upon  the  question  of  increasing  the 
efficiency  of  the  missionary  enterprise. 

The  Urst  is  the  unity  of  the  world.  Though  "  East 
is  East  and  West  is  West,"  there  is  neither  East  nor 
West  when  the  crust  is  broken  through,  inherited  and 
reasoned  moral  judgments  laid  aside  and  bare  soul 
laid  upon  bare  soul.  Diverse  as  the  conditions,  the 
types  of  mind,  the  habits  of  life,  the  prejudice  and 
opinions  of  the  different  peoples,  the  whole  mission- 
ary movement  rests  upon  the  assumption  that  the  di- 
vergences are  secondary  and  that  in  all  essential  needs 
and  capacities  the  world  is  one.  The  souls  of  men 
everywhere  love  and  hate,  sin  and  sorrow,  and  rest  not 
until  they  rest  in  God.  One  Saviour  and  He  alone  suf- 
fices for  the  whole  world,  and  therefore  we  carry  one 
gospel  to  all  men.  Of  course  there  are  distinct  na- 
tional peculiarities  and  each  nation  is  prone  to  em- 
phasize these.  "  Oh,"  say  the  Japanese  and  Hindus 
to  the  missionaries,  "  you  do  not  understand  us.  You 
are  so  different."  But  the  missionaries  understand 
them  very  well,  including  their  claim  to  singularity.  It 
is  one  world.  "  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth." 

The  second  is  the  sameness  of  the  mission  problems 
in  each  land.  If  all  peoples  are  essentially  alike  we 
should  expect  that  in  different  fields  the  missionaries 
would  be  meeting  essentially  the  same  questions — how 
best  to  present  the  gospel  so  as  to  arouse  least  needless 

43 


44         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

resistance  and  how  to  take  advantage  of  every  fa- 
vourable preconception  and  prejudice;  how  to  de- 
velop workers  who  shall  be  a  real  indigenous  power 
and  not  exotic  mimics ;  how  to  develop  real  life  and 
autonomy  in  the  malleable  native  churches;  how 
these  churches  should  be  related  to  the  missions  and 
the  churches  they  represent ;  how  to  make  the  native 
churches  themselves  evangelizing  forces,  and  not  mere 
fields  for  the  pastoral  work  of  missions ;  how  to  de- 
velop that  just  spirit  of  self-respect  and  self-reliance 
which  will  insure  self-support ;  the  problem  of  edu- 
cation. These  are  but  a  few  of  the  common  problems 
arising  in  all  fields.  In  whatever  lands  mission  con- 
ferences are  held,  the  programmes  cover  the  same 
range  of  anxious  inquiries  and  perplexities. 

The  third  impression  to  which  I  have  referred  is  the 
absence  of  any  body  of  accepted  principles  governing 
missionary  operations.  Here  and  there  a  great  mis- 
sionary has  worked  out  some  problem  and  reached 
solid  results,  but  in  a  score  of  other  stations  other 
missionaries,  not  knowing  of  his  results  or  not  willing 
to  accept  them,  are  working  out  the  same  problem  for 
themselves.  There  is  an  immense  amount  of  waste 
and  loss  in  this.  There  is  constant  experimentation  go- 
ing on  over  questions  already  answered.  A  traveller 
among  the  missions  is  profoundly  impressed  by  this. 
He  finds  that  many  missionaries  are  impressed  by  it 
also,  and  he  comes  back  with  the  memory  of  many 
anxious  inquiries  as  to  when  some  body  of  common 
principles,  the  result  of  actual  experience  on  the  mis- 
sion field,  will  be  made  available  for  new  missions  and 
missionaries  and  for  those  so  unfavourably  situated 
that  they  must  rely  upon  others  to  supply  them  with 
such  result. 

All  this  suggests  at  once,  obviously,  the  possibility 


The  Science  of  Missions  45 

and  the  need  of  a  science  of  missions.  A  certain 
amount  of  experimentation  was  necessary.  A  science 
of  missions  could  not  be  deductively  reasoned  out.  But 
now,  after  one  hundred  years  of  actual  experience,  of 
mistake  and  blunder  and  success,  the  time  would  seem 
to  have  come  for  some  sincere  attempt  to  embody  the 
approved  results  of  the  best  missionary  work  in  such 
statements  as  shall  clear  the  ground  of  much  present 
discussion  and  save  much  needless  duplication  of  past 
painful  experiences. 

Is  there  a  science  of  missions?  Some  say  there  is 
not  and  cannot  be.  They  scorn  any  theory  of  mis- 
sions. They  allege  that  the  conditions  met  in  the  mis- 
sion work  are  so  diverse  in  different  fields,  and  so 
fluctuating  in  the  same  field  that  no  body  of  common 
and  settled  principles  can  be  found.  This  work,  they 
hold,  is  a  living  work,  full  of  the  mobility  and  adapt- 
iveness  incident  to  life,  and  carried  on  among  dis- 
tinct peoples  whose  modes  of  opinion,  points  of  view, 
prejudices,  and  judgments  vary  sometimes  almost  an- 
tipodally.  No  hard,  established  outlines  of  policy  and 
method  are  possible.  Moreover,  they  add,  the  mani- 
fest absence  of  anything  like  a  missionary  science  in 
the  past  and  the  present  disagreement  among  mis- 
sionaries make  it  obvious  that  we  must  proceed  with 
the  work  of  missions  along  the  lines  of  pure 
empiricism. 

This  view  seems  to  be  losing  what  popularity  it  ever 
had.  The  fact  that  a  century  of  modern  missions  has 
passed,  the  conviction  that  the  experiments  of  this  cen- 
tury should  have  produced  principles  of  guidance  for 
the  future  that  would  save  us  from  the  errors  of  the 
past,  the  obvious  waste  and  pain  due  to  the  retrial  of 
methods  disapproved  by  unfavourable  result  already, 
the  growing  agreement  among  missionaries  as  to  cer- 


4-6         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

tain  great  principles,  the  necessity  of  a  wiser  and  more 
far-reaching  use,  if  such  be  possible,  of  the  scanty 
funds  available  for  the  world's  evangelization,  the  in- 
stinct of  progress  that  revolts  against  incessant  and 
duplicative  experimentalism — these  are  some  of  the 
grounds  for  the  growing  belief  that  an  effort  should 
be  made  to  reach  and  formulate  and  thenceforth  rigor- 
ously to  apply  the  main  principles  of  the  missionary 
enterprise. 

Of  course,  the  difficulties  are  that  the  missionary 
force  is  constantly  shifting,  that  the  experienced  men 
are  overwhelmed  with  work,  and  lost  in  their  own 
round  of  duties  without  Opportunity  for  broader  study 
of  the  principles  developed  in  their  experience,  and  that 
new  missions  are  constantly  springing  up  without 
heredity  or  tradition,  to  repeat  the  blunders  of  the 
old.  But  these  difficulties  have  been  sufficiently  rec- 
ognized to  be  in  part  overcome.  A  scientific  mis- 
sionary literature  is  growing  up.  Missionary  coun- 
cils are  discussing  missionary  experience  with  the 
specific  purpose  of  learning,  therefrom  the  right  prin- 
ciples of  missionary  work. 

From  the  reports  of  these  councils,  for  example  the 
China  conferences  at  Shanghai  in  1877  ^^<^  1890,  the 
India  conferences  in  Calcutta  in  '82-^83 ,  and  Bombay 
in  '92-'93,  the  Japan  conferences  at  Osaka  in  1881  and 
at  Tokyo  in  1900,  the  London  conference  in  1888,  and 
such  other  conferences  as  those  at  Liverpool  in  i860, 
Lahore  in  '62-'63,  Mildmay  in  1878,  and  the  meetings 
of  the  China  Educational  Association  in  1893,  1896  and 
1899,  and  the  annual  meetings  of  the  members  and 
officers  of  the  mission  boards  of  America  in  New  York 
each  winter  since  1893  and  the  Ecumenical  Conference 
of  1900;  from  articles  and  letters  and  books,  by  mis- 
sionaries, and  reports  of  visits  to  the  mission  fields  by 


The  Science  of  Missions  47 

students  of  missions,  like  Lawrence's  Modern  Mis- 
sions in  the  East,  and  by  representatives  of  the  mis- 
sion boards — it  is  becoming  possible  to  gather  such 
a  consensus  of  opinion  on  the  methods  and  principles 
of  the  mission  work,  as  to  supply  the  outlines  at  least 
of  a  science  of  missions. 
It  may  be  objected. 

1.  That  this  is  the  kind  of  question  it  is  not  profit- 
able to  raise;  that  we  have  a  generally  accepted  body 
of  missionary  principles  already,  and  that  it  is  better  to 
let  it  grow  on  naturally  rather  than  to  waste  time  and 
divert  attention  from  practical  work  by  discussing  it. 
I  sympathize  a  good  deal  with  this  view.  It  would  be 
unfortunate  to  turn  mission  attention  away  from  the 
hard,  solemn  business  of  the  flesh  and  blood  work  we 
have  in  hand.  All  I  urge  is  that  if  we  have  these  prin- 
ciples now  actually  worked  out,  we  should  attempt 
now  to  put  them  in  such  shape  that  they  will  be  of 
service  to  new  missionaries  and  to  others,  as  the 
dominating  principles  to  govern  all  the  new  work 
established,  that  they  and  it  may  be  saved  the  long 
years  of  toil  and  trial  which  the  acquisition  of  these 
principles  has  cost. 

2.  It  may  be  objected  by  others  that  missions  are  a 
practical  work  and  that  we  do  not  want  theory.  But 
theory  is  not  speculation.  We  do  not  want  that,  but 
surely  we  do  want  those  true  statements  of  method  and 
principle  on  which  we  are  striving  to  act,  or  ac- 
knowledge that  we  desire  to  act;  and  by  just  as  mnch 
as  we  deem  of  importance  the  activities  under  which 
these  principles  lie,  must  we  regard  as  desirable  the 
proper  formulation  of  the  principles  themselves. 

3.  There  are  others  who  say  "  We  do  not  believe  in 
this  pothering  with  principles.  There  is  no  science  of 
Christian  activities  at  home  in  America.    We  can't  be 


48         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

wiser  on  the  mission  field  than  we  have  been  here. 
We  have  all  sorts  of  methods  and  organizations  here 
involving  all  kinds  of  inconsistencies  and  contradic- 
tions. We  must  just  be  sane  enough  to  work  in  the 
same  broad  ways  abroad."  Many  of  us  would  be  pre- 
pared to  take  issue  with  those  who  make  this  objec- 
tion. We  ought  to  be  wiser  on  the  mission  field  than 
here.  The  costly  blunders  and  controversies  and  com- 
petitions of  the  work  at  home  ought  not  to  be  repeated 
abroad.  Here,  moreover,  a  homogeneous  and  ad- 
vanced people  can  stand  many  mistakes,  and  resources 
are  enormous.  There  we  are  dealing  with  elementary 
and  primitive  peoples  and  our  resources  are  scanty, 
and  the  work  is  so  vast  as  to  render  the  duplication 
of  home  machineries  and  mistakes  and  wastes  a  pro- 
ceeding beyond  pardon. 

4.  The  despondent  objection  is  made  by  some  that 
no  common  body  of  mission  principles  can  be  agreed 
upon.  There  are  doubtless  some  points  on  which  as 
yet  many  could  not  agree.  But  on  the  main  principles 
of  missions,  or  on  most  of  them,  at  least,  missionaries 
are  agreed.  I  observed  upon  the  mission  field  that 
while  some  missionaries  were  more  ready  than  others 
to  waive  missionary  principles  in  the  face  of  circum- 
stances where  it  required  tact  and  will  and  judgment 
to  apply  them,  and  where  the  path  of  least  resistance 
was  that  of  surrender  of  principle,  yet  almost  all  mis- 
sionaries were  agreed  upon  the  broad  outlines  of  a 
policy  of  missions.  The  differences  of  opinion  arose 
over  the  question.  What  exceptions  are  allowable? 

To  any  but  those  who  are  satisfied  with  such  objec- 
tions as  these  the  wonder  is  that  the  formation  of  a 
body  of  wise  missionary  principles  has  been  delayed  so 
long.  It  would  be  easy  to  produce  here  letters  from 
missionaries  all  over  the  world  expressive  of  their  de- 


The  Science  of  Missions  49 

sire  for  such  a  statement.  They  do  not  feel  that  they 
are  in  a  position  to  supply  it.  Their  experiences  are 
confined  to  certain  departments  of  the  work,  and  even 
in  those  departments  they  are  familiar,  as  a  rule,  with 
but  a  single  field,  and  it  is  difficult  for  them  to  dis- 
tinguish the  elements  which  are  provincial  from  those 
that  are  universal. 

Such  an  outline  as  is  needed  should  include  the  aim 
of  missions,  the  means,  the  methods  or  agencies,  the 
agents,  and  such  principles  of  other  aspects  of  the 
work,  as  may  now  be  possible  of  enunciation.  The 
most  satisfactory  attempt  of  which  I  know  at  such  a 
statement  as  this,  is  contained  in  the  manuals  defining 
the  policy  of  the  missions  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society.  An  earlier  attempt,  wonderfully  clear  and 
exhaustive,  but  almost  lost  sight  of  for  many  years, 
was  made  by  the  prudential  Committee  of  the  Ameri- 
can Board  in  1855,  after  the  return  of  the  delegation 
sent  to  the.  missions  of  the  Board  in  Asia,  and  was  re- 
ported by  the  Committee  to  the  Board  at  the  meeting 
at  Albany,  at  which  the  reports  of  Dr.  Anderson  and 
Dr.  Thomson,  who  constituted  the  delegation,  were 
considered. 

First  of  all,  the  aim  of  missions.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  this,  which  is  necessarily  first,  will  sug- 
gest divergence  of  opinion.  What  is  the  aim  of  mis- 
sions? Everything  else  will  depend  on  this.  First,  it 
is  to  preach  the  gospel.  We  are  all  agreed  here.  But 
it  is  preaching  not  merely  as  superficial  announcers, 
but  with  a  view  to  the  salvation  of  souls,  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Church,  and  the  evangelization  of  the 
world.  So  far  we  are  all  agreed.  But  what  is  meant 
by  the  establishment  of  the  Church?  The  usual  reply 
is  "  a  self-supporting,  self-governing,  self-propagating 
native  church."     And  here,  obviously,  there  is  differ- 


50         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ence  of  practice  and  opinion ;  for  while  some  are  work- 
ing toward  the  erection  of  independent  national 
Churches  in  the  different  countries,  others  are  building 
up  Churches  organically  related  to  the  American 
Churches  and  designed  to  remain  so  attached,  and  to  be 
self-governing  only  in  some  such  sense  as  shall  not 
destroy  their  attachment.  If  you  will  seriously  reflect 
upon  it  you  will  see  how  vitally  this  difference  of 
policy  affects  mission  method.  When  the  aim  of  a 
mission  is  to  build  up  an  independent  national  Church 
one  set  of  principles  will  control  the  missionaries  in 
their  relation  thereto,  and  w^hen  the  aim  is  to  build 
up  a  Church  which  shall  be  an  organic  part  of  the 
Church  to  which  the  missionaries  belong,  quite  a  dif- 
ferent set  of  principles  will  control. 

Secondly,  the  aim  of  missions  having  been  defined, 
our  science  of  missions  should  deal  with  the  means. 

In  the  definition  of  the  aim  just  given,  the  institu- 
tion of  the  Church  is  recognized,  but  this  is  purely  in- 
strumental. The  ideal  of  the  Church  to  be  kept  in 
view  is  that  of  a  spiritual  fellowship,  rather  than  that 
of  a  formalized  institution.  The  aim  of  missions  is  a 
spiritual  aim.  The  means  must  be  spiritual  means. 
The  use  of  money,  of  social  incentives,  of  political 
influence,  of  philanthropic  effort  may  be  allowed.  The 
first  is  in  a  measure  necessary,  but  all  have  their  limits, 
and  in  the  case  of  some  the  limits  are  close  and  con- 
fining. In  a  right  science  of  missions  the  truth  sug- 
gested here  will  be  emphasized  remorselessly.  There 
are  missions  and  missionaries  who  tie  their  work  and 
its  prosperity  inseparably  to  large  supplies  of  mission- 
ary money.  When  they  can  spend  money  without  stint, 
they  speak  jubilantly.  They  have  many  "  arms,"  as 
they  call  them,  by  which  they  mean  native  agents 
under  their   direction,   hired   by   them.     When   their 


The  Science  of  Missions  51 

funds  are  curtailed,  then  their  work  is  ruined,  their 
"  arms  "  are  gone.  "  Hands  "  they  should  be  called. 
It  is  inexpressibly  sad  to  have  the  mission  work 
reduced  to  this  commercial  basis,  and  to  have  all  growth 
and  enlargement  conditioned  on  increased  appropria- 
tions. This  makes  Qiristianity's  appeal  inferior  to 
that  of  Buddhism  or  Mohammedanism.  There  is  a 
right  use  of  money  to  which  reference  will  be  made, 
but  there  is  a  wrong  use  that  is  easier  and,  perhaps, 
more  frequent.  It  follows  that  the  richest  missions 
are  not  necessarily  the  best,  nor  are  the  poorest. 
Those  are  best  which  recognize  most  clearly  that  this 
Avork  is  a  spiritual  work,  and  which  subordinate  all 
mechanical  or  material  means,  while  they  trust  wholly 
to  the  Spirit  of  Life  and  of  God.  And  they  must  do 
this  not  in  station  or  mission  prayer  meeting  only,  or 
in  pious  correspondence,  but  practically  and  vitally 
in  their  work'  and  methods. 

Thirdly,  the  methods  or  agencies.  There  are  four 
great  methods  or  departments  of  the  mission  work — 
the  evangelistic,  the  educational,  the  medical  and  the 
literary.  Some  might  add  woman's  work,  but  that 
is  included  in  all  of  the  four  named,  and  ought  not  to 
be  isolated  by  itself. 

I.  Some  would  deny  to  any  one  department  the 
exclusive  use  of  the  title  evangelistic,  and  their 
contention  that  all  mission  work  should  be  evangelistic 
is  just,  but  the  word  may  be  allowed  to  stand  to  de- 
scribe that  department  of  the  work  which  relies  on 
no  indirect  method,  but  is  concerned  with  the  direct 
and  simple  oral  presentation  of  the  gospel.  This  is 
the  supreme  method.  The  best  missions  are  those 
which  use  it  most,  and  a  science  of  missions  should 
set  it  in  the  foreground.  The  best  ways  of  stating 
Christian  truth  and  commending  it  to  the  minds  and 


52         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

hearts  of  the  people — the  teaching  of  the  gospel  to 
the  congregations  of  inquirers,  the  inspiration  and 
supervision  of  native  evangelists,  the  vivification  of  the 
native  churches,  the  organization  and  indomitable 
prosecution  of  itineration — these  are  but  a  few  of  the 
questions  to  be  dealt  with  in  the  direct  evangelistic 
work. 

Evangelistic  work  is  simply  the  preaching  or 
teaching  of  the  gospel.  The  etymology  of  the  word 
indicates  that  it  means  the  real  explanation  of  the 
message  of  salvation.  Such  work  may  be  done  in 
churches,  or  chapels,  or  school-rooms,  from  house  to 
house,  in  the  street,  on  boats  or  trains,  with  crowds, 
families,  or  individuals.  This  is  the  supreme  method. 
Christian  words  without  the  Christian  life  and  the 
fruits  thereof  will  not  suffice.  But  neither  will  up- 
rightness and  benevolence,  dumb  of  any  clear  oral 
presentation  of  Christ.  Going  into  all  the  world,  the 
early  disciples  were  to  preach  the  gospel.  We  are  to 
do  the  same.  The  missionary  who  cannot  teach 
Christ  and  His  gospel,  and  who  does  not  make  this 
his  supreme  and  constant  business  is  an  anomaly. 
Because  the  vast  majority  of  those  to  be  reached  by 
the  gospel  are  not  within  easy  distance  of  missionary 
homes,  the  missionaries  go  out  after  them  and  this 
itinerating  work  becomes  the  leading  form  of  evange- 
listic effort.  This  work  is  hard.  It  demands  absence 
from  home,  involves  rough  conditions,  is  very  trying 
and  exacting.  But  it  is  the  most  important  agency  of 
all,  and  should  be  carried  on  comprehensively,  syste- 
matically, persistently. 

2.  The  problem  of  educational  ivork  has  often 
been  discussed.  Such  discussion  will  be  greatly 
clarified  and  we  shall  draw  nearer  to  common  con- 
clusions, if  we  recognize  that  there  are  three  grades 


The  Science  of  Missions  53 

of  mission  schools  which  are  not  to  be  dealt  with  in  the 
same  way:  (i)  primary,  (2)  secondary  or  academic 
schools,  and  (3)  professional,  theological,  pedagogic, 
medical,  or  industrial. 

(i)  Primary  schools  are  either  (a)  evangelistic, 
designed  to  secure  opportunity  for  evangelistic  work 
in  the  homes  of  the  children  and  to  teach  Christi- 
anity to  the  children  in  the  school,  or  (b)  parochial, 
to  teach  the  children  of  Christians.  Both  of  these 
features  are  combined  in  many  primary  schools. 

The  following  principles  may  be  suggested  as  to 
this  grade  of  educational  work.  (A)  Such  schools 
require  constant  and  thorough  evangelistic  supervision. 
No  more  schools  should  be  established  by  a  mission 
than  can  be  thoroughly  looked  after  and  followed  up. 
(B)  Only  Christian  teachers  should  be  employed. 
Rarely,  exceptional  circumstances  may  arise  justifying 
the  employment  of  a  non-Christian,  but  there  must 
be  the  strongest  reason  therefor,  and  such  a  school 
should  be  under  incessant  supervision.  When  asso- 
ciated with  a  native  congregation,  primary  schools 
should  have  the  advantage  of  the  closest  supervision 
of  the  native  pastor,  who  may  often  wisely  be  made 
responsible  for  catechetical  instruction.  (C)  Such 
schools  must  be  unqualifiedly  Christian,  and  especially 
in  the  former  the  dominant  purpose  of  the  school  is 
to  convert  to  Christianity  and  strengthen  in  adherence 
thereto.  (D)  In  evangelistic  primary  schools  it  is 
wasteful  not  to  utilize  all  the  evangelistic  opportunities 
offered  by  the  opened  homes  of  the  pupils.  A  mis- 
sionary in  charge  of  such  work  must  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  open  so  many  schools  as  to  make  this  super- 
vision and  utilization  impossible.  (E)  The  primary 
day  schools  of  each  mission  should  as  far  as  possible, 
have  a  uniform  curriculum,   serving  as   preparatory 


54         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  the  schools  of  higher  grade,  and  obviating  the  neces- 
sity of  having  primary  departments  in  the  higher 
schools.  This  should  be  the  case  particularly  in  the 
parochial  schools.  In  the  purely  evangelistic 
schools  it  may  often  be  desirable  to  use  the  full  time 
and  strength  of  the  teacher,  in  direct  evangelistic 
teaching.  (F)  It  is  most  desirable  to  encourage 
each  Christian  community  to  provide  schools  for 
its  children,  itself  supplying  therefor  requisite 
buildings,  furniture,  and  books,  and  in  whole  or  in 
part  the  salary  of  the  teacher,  and  the  payment  of  the 
expenses  by  the  people  themselves  should  be  kept  in 
\\e-w  as  the  ideal.  (G)  And  with  general  reference  to 
the  support  of  such  schools,  though  it  may  often  be 
necessary  to  await  a  developed  interest,  it  may  be  held 
that  the  support  of  parochial  schools  cannot  be  con- 
ceived as  one  of  the  permanent  responsibilities  of  a  mis- 
sion board.  The  establishment  of  Christian  schools  is 
necessary  and  wise,  and  the  encouragement  and  assist- 
ance of  such  schools  to  a  limited  extent,  is  a  proper  field 
for  the  use  of  mission  funds  where  such  use  "  con- 
tributes to  a  wider  and  more  effective  proclamation  of 
the  gospel,  and  gives  promise  of  vital  missionary  re- 
sults ;  "  and  does  not  diminish  or  discourage  at  all  the 
widest  and  most  direct  evangelistic  work.  But  mis- 
sionary societies  are  not  prepared  to  commit  themselves 
to  the  policy  of  assuming  full  responsibility  for  the 
establishment  and  maintenance  of  so-called  "  parochial 
schools  "  generally.  These  should  grow  out  of  the 
needs  of  the  native  Churches,  and  be  supported  in 
whole  or  in  part,  by  the  native  Christians  themselves. 
Regarding  schools  for  the  children  of  non-Christians, 
it  is  clear  that  only  as  such  schools  are  a  direct  evangel- 
istic agency  can  they  be  regarded  as  proper  objects  of 
support  or  assistance  from  mission  funds. 


The  Science  of  Missions  55 

(2)   Secondary  or  academic  schools, 

(A)  The  aim  of  such  schools  is  to  develop  Chris- 
tian character  and  fit  pupils  for  positions  of  influence 
and  usefulness  among  their  own  people  and  in  the 
native  Church,  not  of  course  as  professional  preachers 
or  teachers  only : — in  a  word,  to  raise  up  Christian 
leaders  both  men  and  women. 

(B).  Three  principles  must  govern  all  educational 
institutions  of  this  character  under  the  care  of  mission 
boards,  (a)  They  must  be  thorough  in  their  work. 
These  schools  may  vary  greatly  in  grade  and  range  of 
instruction,  but  whatever  is  taught  should  be  taught 
thoroughly,  both  for  its  effect  on  character,  and  be- 
cause thoroughness  is  itself  education,  (b)  They  must 
provide  education  adapted  to  the  requirements  and 
characteristics  of  the  pupils  taught,  and  to  the  condi- 
tions of  life  and  work  for  which  the  pupils  are  to  be 
fitted.  (c)  They  must  be  unqualifiedly  Christian, 
bringing  and  keeping  all  their  pupils  under  powerful 
and  personal  religious  influence. 

(C)  This  aim  and  these  principles  suggest  a  few 
of  the  limitations  of  this  grade  of  educational  work  in 
missions,  (a)  No  more  students  should  be  received 
than  can  be  trained  thoroughly  and  influenced  to  the 
maximum.  It  is  wisest  to  begin  such  institutions  with 
few  pupils  and  increase  only  gradually.  (b)  The 
number  of  Christian  pupils  should  be  sufficient  to  give 
tone  and  character  to  the  school.  A  predominant 
heathen  influence  is  fatal  to  the  best  resuhs.  (c)  The 
number  of  pupils  should  not  be  so  large  as  to  pre- 
clude the  maximum  of  personal  contact  with  the  pupils. 
It  is  disastrous  to  enlarge  a  school  beyond  the  point 
where  this  can  be  secured.  Each  boy  or  girl  should 
be  studied  personally,  and  his  or  her  training  should 
be  shaped  according  to  his  or  her  needs.      In    this 


56         Missionary  PrincipJes  and  Practice 

way  the  waste  of  training  for  positions  in  life  those 
who  are  wholly  unqualified  for  such  positions  will  be 
measurably  avoided,  (d)  Education  should  not  be 
given  beyond  the  needs  of  the  pupils  or  the  people 
whose  leaders  they  are  to  become.  Languages  and 
studies  must  nut  be  introduced  which  lift  them  out  of 
sympathy  with  their  people.  It  is  essential  to  leader- 
ship that  the  gap  between  the  leader  and  the  led 
should  not  be  too  wide,  (e)  Especially  will  this  prin- 
ciple of  adaptation  require  in  schools  such  frugality 
and  simplicity  of  life  and  such  training  in  self-reliance 
and  humility  and  honour  as  will  prevent  the  develop- 
ment of  pride  and  those  allied  feelings  which  are  fatal 
to  the  highest  leadership.  (/)  A  broad  view  of  the 
operations  of  human  nature  and  a  recognition  of  the 
vast  chasm  between  the  modern  education  of  the  West 
which  is  presented  in  mission  schools,  and  the  intellect- 
ual disposition  and  characteristics  of  the  non-Christian 
peoples  would  suggest  also  that  this  secondary  or 
academic  education,  in  the  higher  forms  at  least, 
should  not  be  given  too  lavishly,  nor  carried  in  its 
development  beyond  the  point  where  its  product  can 
be  absorbed  and  utilized  by  the  people.  There  is  a 
limit  to  the  number  of  leaders  needed,  and  more  may 
not  wisely  be  trained  than  the  necessities  of  existing 
Christian  communities  require,  or  than  could  be  used  as 
leaders  of  new  communities  or  societies. 

(D)  There  are  fields  where  this  secondary  educa- 
tion is  used  as  an  evangelistic  agency  and  there  can  be 
no  objection  to  this  where  such  use  does  not  militate 
against  a  just  regard  for  the  aim,  principles,  and  limi- 
tations laid  down.  But  there  are  cases  also  where  its 
use  involves  a  disregard  of  these  limitations,  because 
there  is  not  a  sufficient  Christian  community  on  which 
to  rest  a  school  with  a  predominant  element  of  Chris- 


The  Science  of  Missions  57 

tian  students.  Some  Moslem  lands  present  this  con- 
dition. In  such  cases,  it  can  only  be  insisted  that 
though  some  of  the  limitations  specified  must  be 
waived,  there  must  be  the  greater  care,  if  such  be 
possible,  to  observe  the  three  principles  which  should 
control  such  institutions.  And  the  general  rule  must 
be,  that  schools  of  this  grade  should  follow  and  not 
precede  the  establishment  of  Christian  communities; 
or,  that  in  the  absence  of  such  communities,  the  en- 
largement of  the  schools  beyond  the  exceedingly  small 
number  whom  it  may  be  hoped  to  win  to  Christianity, 
under  the  dominant  spiritual  influence  and  purpose  of 
the  missionary,  should  perhaps  wait  upon  the  suc- 
cessful results  of  the  exercise  of  this  influence. 

(E)  As  to  the  financial  support  of  this  grade  of  edu- 
cation, it  may  be  maintained  that  the  mission  work 
has  now  reached  a  stage  when  the  oflfer  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  such  education  should  not  involve  the 
exemption  of  the  parents  or  guardians  of  the  pupils 
from,  the  expense  to  which  they  would  be  put  for  their 
maintenance  at  home.  Clothes,  food,  travelling  ex- 
penses, and  all  incidentals,  including  books,  should  be 
provided  for  the  pupils  by  their  own  people  as  soon  as 
possible.  And,  as  soon  as  possible,  the  people  them- 
selves should  provide  some  annual  payment  toward  the 
general  cost  of  the  education  given.  As  the  ability  of 
the  people  to  pay  and  their  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  the  education  increase,  larger  portions  of  the  cost 
of  its  support  may  be  laid  upon  them. 

(3)  Such  educational  preparation  as  is  given  to 
native  Christians  or  others,  and  not  included  in  the 
above  classification,  may  be  summarized  as  theological 
or  Biblical,  pedagogic,  medical,  industrial,  or  linguis- 
tic. Often  these  grades  of  educational  work  are  com- 
bined with  academic  or  secondary  education,  in  which 


58  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

case,  they  are  to  be  governed  by  its  aim,  principles, 
and  limitations.  When  given  in  separate  courses  it 
may  be  either  as  supplementary  to,  and  consequent 
upon,  the  completion  of  an  academic  course,  or  inde- 
pendent thereof,  (a)  Two  grades  of  theological  in- 
struction may  well  be  provided.  Men  of  great  power 
and  usefulness  will  often  be  raised  up  outside  of 
the  long  course  of  regular  educational  preparation, 
and  general  Bible  training  courses  may  wisely  be  pro- 
vided for  such.  Bible  classes  or  schools  for  the  train- 
ing of  Bible  women  may  also  be  established.  Only,  in 
such  institutions  as  these,  the  principles  and  aims  and 
limits  already  detailed,  are  comparatively  easy  of  ap- 
plication, (b)  Training  classes  may  be  conducted  for 
one  or  two  months  of  the  year  for  Bible  teachers, 
leaders  of  congregations,  primary  school  teachers,  etc. 
Such  classes  in  the  nature  of  institutes  or  training 
conferences  are  of  great  utility,  the  people  providing 
their  own  travelling  expenses,  and  often  their  own 
entertainment,  or  receiving  this  from  some  Christian 
community  acting  as  host,  and  the  predominant  pur- 
pose of  such  gatherings  being  spiritual  and  practical. 
(c)  Classes  for  the  teaching  of  some  foreign  lan- 
guage undertaken  for  evangelistic  purposes,  may  be 
profitable  where  the  purposes  for  which  they  are  under- 
taken are  conscientiously  sought  and  measurably  but 
distinctly  secured,  (d)  Medical  schools,  while  popular 
with  many  who  seek  them  without  Christian  purpose 
or  sympathy,  should  yet  have  as  their  aim  as  truly 
as  any  other  educational  work,  the  raising  up  of  Chris- 
tian leaders.  The  preparation  of  good  doctors  is  not 
sufficient  to  justify  such  schools,  though,  as  a  merely 
temporary  expedient  to  gain  friends  in  a  Moslem  land, 
it  may  be  held  by  some  to  do  so.  Such  schools  should, 
as  a  rule,  be  as  thorough  and  Christian  as  any  schools, 


The  Science  of  Missions  59 

and  experience  has  shown  that  they  may  be  expected 
to  be  self-supporting,  (e)  No  poHcy  is  enunciated  as 
to  distinct  industrial  schools  or  departments.  The 
experience  of  many  boards,  however,  has  not  been 
happy  with  such  schools,  and  pleas  for  their  increase 
should  be  considered  cautiously.  They  are  sure  to  in- 
crease, however.  The  industrial  element,  it  would  seem, 
must  be  a  desirable  and  even  necessary  element  in  most 
schools,  for  the  purpose,  if  not  of  facilitating  self- 
support  (which  may  be  impracticable  in  many  cases), 
at  least  of  encouraging  self-reliance  and  teaching  the 
honourable   dignity  of  self-help  and  toil. 

(4)  Other  forms  of  educational  work  should  be 
recognized  which  are  salutary  and  helpful,  and  which 
it  is  competent  for  a  missionary  agency  to  carry  on 
with  funds  giz'en  for  such  forms  of  ivork.  But  there 
is  danger  lest  the  influence  of  these  should  distort 
the  right  balance  of  activities  in  a  mission,  and  the 
principles  already  set  forth  should  govern  edu- 
cational work  supported  by  funds  given  for  the  pur- 
pose of  evangelization. 

What  modifications,  if  any,  should  be  made  tem- 
porarily in  these  principles,  under  the  conditions  pre- 
vailing in  Moslem  lands,  for  example,  would  be  a 
question  to  be  considered  by  itself. 

3.  Medical  missions  may  be  grouped  as  forms  of 
philanthropic  effort.  In  all  use  of  philanthropic  effort, 
such  as  medical  missions,  relief  work,  etc.,  as  a 
method  of  mission  work,  the  dominant  and  de- 
termining aim  must  be  evangelistic.  Such  work 
is  useful  as  securing  friendship,  removing  prej- 
udice, representing  the  helpful,  unselfish  spirit  of 
Christianity,  contributing  to  the  preaching  of 
Christ,  and  the  revelation  of  Him  as  Saviour 
and  Lord,  the  source  of  all  life  and  hope,  and  as  reliev- 


6o         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ing  suffering;  but  it  is  not  the  responsibility  of  the 
foreign  missionary  enterprise  to  care  for  the  sickness 
and  suffering  of  the  world.  Times  of  critical  need 
may  occur,  as  in  great  famines  and  pestilence,  when  a 
broad  liberty  of  action  must  be  recognized ;  but  in 
general,  the  aim  of  our  philanthropic  work  should  be 
to  contribute  directly  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel, 
the  establishment  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  to  the 
fostering  of  that  Christian  spirit  which  will  provide 
through  the  native  Church  which  is  growing  up  and 
through  the  people  themselves,  the  salutary  fruits  of 
Christianity  in  philanthropy  and  humanitarian  effort. 
As  a  missionary  method,  philanthropic  work  should 
ordinarily  be  limited,  therefore,  by  the  possibility  of  its 
evangelistic  utilization  and  influence.  A  small  de- 
velopment of  such  work  contributing  powerfully  in  the 
direction  indicated  is  better  than  a  large  development 
of  but  feeble  or  indirect  evangelistic  influence. 

4.  Regarding  literary  ivork,  the  fourth  class  of 
methods,  these  principles  would  seem  to  be  obvious. 
Only  those  men  should  be  set  aside  by  the  mission  for 
literary  work  who  are  qualified  for  it.  So  long  as 
more  important  work  is  waiting  to  be  done,  it  should 
be  done.  Time  should  not  be  taken  from  it  for  less 
necessary  literary  work.  Too  much  of  such  work 
can  be  done,  or  it  can  be  done  prematurely.  The 
Bible  and  truly  required  books  should  be  supplied 
as  soon  as  possible.  But  such  principles  are  ele- 
mentary. 

Having  dealt  with  the  aim,  the  means  and  the 
methods  of  the  missionary  work,  a  statement  of  mis- 
sion policy  would  deal  next  with  the  agents.  There 
is  not  very  clear  agreement  as  to  the  native  agents 
engaged  in  the  work.  Perhaps  the  difficulties  and  con- 
fusion   here    have    arisen    from    the   failure  to    dis- 


The  Science  of  Missions  6i 

tinguish  between  two  classes  of  agents  and  their  dis- 
tinct functions  and  responsibilities,  (i)  The  agents 
of  the  missions,  evangelists,  assistants,  etc.  and  (2)  the 
agents  of  the  native  church,  pastors,  teachers,  etc. 
To  those  whose  aim  is  to  build  up  an  independent 
native  church  this  distinction  is  vital.  To  those  whose 
aim  it  is  to  build  up  a  church  organically  related  and 
subordinate  to  the  church  from  which  the  missionaries 
come,  it  may  seem  of  slight  account.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  former  it  will  be  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance to  keep  ever  clear  the  principle  that  the  re- 
sponsibility of  supporting  the  institutions  of  the  native 
church  rests  upon  the  church,  and  that  for  the  agents 
of  the  church  the  church  is  sponsor  and  stay. 

The  main  agents  of  the  mission  work  are  the  foreign 
missionaries.  Apart  from  proper  intellectual  and  phy- 
sical qualifications,  the  essential  thing  is  that  they 
should  be  men  and  women  having  life  to  give.  If  they 
have  no  life  to  give  they  will  be  mere  paymasters  of 
native  "  hands "  or  "  arms,"  or  doctors,  or  school 
teachers.  They  should  know  the  meaning  and  have 
experienced  the  power  of  Christ's  words,  "  He  that 
believeth  on  Me,  out  of  the  depths  of  his  life  shall 
pour  torrents  of  living  water."  These  missionaries 
should  have  such  support  as  to  be  freed  from  anxiety, 
from  the  necessity  of  supplying  appeals  to  sympathy 
or  pity,  from  dependence  upon  others,  and  as  to  be 
able  to  preserve  health  and  efficiency.  They  should 
be  organized  into  mission  councils  having  supervision 
of  the  work,  and  authority  to  a  just  extent  over  the 
workers.  Such  councils  should  act  as  units  toward 
native  churches.  It  is  most  imprudent  and  unjust 
for  dissentients  from  mission  plans  to  side  with  native 
churches  in  disagreement. 

Supplementary  principles.      The    general    sug- 


62         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

gestions  already  made  should  be  supplemented  at  many 
points  in  an  attempt  to  outline  a  science  of  mis- 
sions. 

1.  In  the  establishment  of  a  church  the  question  at 
once  arises  as  to  the  standard  of  admission  and  of  dis- 
cipline. Shall  our  ground  be  high  or  low?  I  should 
answer  in  some  such  way  as  this : 

Recognizing  that  Christian  character  is  a  growth, 
and  that  the  facts  of  Scripture  and  of  life,  teach  that 
patience  and  education  are  necessary  to  the  develop- 
ment of  high  moral  standards  and  the  realization  of 
these  standards  in  conduct,  it  is  believed  that  it  is  un- 
profitable to  expect  the  fruits  of  eighteen  centuries 
of  Christian  culture  to  be  reproduced  in  a  generation 
on  the  mission  field,  and  unjust  to  demand  them  as 
conditions  of  admission  to  the  church.  At  the  same 
time,  the  vital  importance  of  establishing  from  the 
outset,  right  ideals  in  the  native  churches  must  be 
recognized,  and  the  weight  of  judgment  should  be 
given  in  support  of  those  missionaries  who  contend  for 
a  relatively  high  standard  of  admission  and  discipline 
as  essential  to  the  strength  and  purity  of  the  native 
church.  It  is  not  regarded  as  permissible,  for  ex- 
ample, that  polygamists  should  be  admitted  to  the 
Lord's  Supper.  Thorough  instruction  of  inquirers 
and  the  inculcation  of  high  moral  oblis^ations,  should 
be  provided  for.  On  the  other  hand,  there  should  be 
regard  to  the  antecedents  and  environment  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  emphasis  should  be  laid  not  so  much  upon 
extended  knowledge  or  even  conformity  to  set  require- 
ments, as  upon  earnestness,  genuine  faith,  and  that 
sincere  acceptance  of  Christ  which  will  issue  in  true 
living. 

2.  The  question   of  the   form   of   ecclesiastical   or' 


The  Science  of  Missions  63 

ganization  at  once  arises  and  of  the  relation  of  the 
new  church  to  the  American  churches.  The  Metho- 
dists, Hke  the  Roman  CathoUcs,  are  estabhshing  their 
own  church  everywhere.  The  Methodist  churches  in 
China,  India,  and  Japan  are  not  national  churches, 
but  are  organically  connected  with  and  subject  to  the 
American  Methodist  Church.  The  Presbyterian,  Con- 
gregational, and  Baptist  churches  pursue  a  different 
plan,  and  the  larger  Church  of  England  Society  (the 
C.  M.  S.),  looks  forward  also  to  the  independence  of 
all  the  new  churches.  As  to  the  first  question  of  the 
form  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  this  seems  to  me  to 
approach  a  true  answer :  and  as  to  the  second  question 
of  the  relation  of  the  native  church  to  the  mission- 
aries and  their  home  church,  this  seems  to  me  a  wise 
statement : 

Ecclesiastical  organization  should  not  be  developed 
prematurely  or  in  excess  of  the  real  needs  of  the 
native  church,  or  the  capacity  and  demands  of  its 
spiritual  life.  And  in  no  case  should  cumbersome 
and  hampering  institutions  be  established.  It  is  in- 
expedient to  give  formal  organization  to  churches  and 
ecclesiastical  councils  after  American  models,  unless 
there  is  manifest  need  therefor,  and  such  forms  are 
shown  to  be  best  adapted  to  the  people  and  the  cir- 
cumstances. In  general,  the  ends  of  the  work  will 
best  be  attained  by  simple  and  flexible  organization 
adapted  to  the  characteristics  and  real  needs  of  the 
people,  and  designed  to  develop  and  utilize  spiritual 
power  rather  than  merely  or  primarily  to  secure  proper 
ecclesiastical  procedure. 

The  aim  of  the  foreign  mission  movement  is  to  carry 
the  gospel  to  the  unevangelized  people,  and  to  build 
up  living  native  churches  among  them.  To  this  end 
it  is  expedient  that  true  conceptions  of  the  duties  of 


64         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  native  church  should  prevail  from  the  outset, 
that  its  development  may  be  natural  and  healthy.  It 
is  desirable  also,  that  as  the  native  church  grows,  its 
relations  to  the  missions  working  in  its  behalf  may 
be  such  as  to  facilitate  the  advance  of  the  missions 
into  regions  beyond,  and  as  to  secure  for  the  native 
church  the  utmost  help  and  counsel  from  the  mis- 
sions, while  not  prejudicing  at  all  the  growth  of  the 
church  in  self-support,  self-extension,  and  self-gov- 
ernment. Experience  has  proved  that  it  is  most  un- 
wise to  confuse  the  functions  and  responsibilities  of 
the  missions  and  the  native  churches.  Preeminent 
among  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  native  church 
are  the  duties  of  self-support,  self-extension,  self- 
government.  The  native  churches  must  be  summoned 
from  the  beginning  to  the  r^ht  discharge  of  these 
responsibilities,  which  the  missi.::-  should  guard 
against  invasion.  To  this  end,  the  missionaries  should 
consider  with  greatest  care  their  relations  to  the  native 
churches. 

Experience    suggests   the    following   principles : 
(i)   The  native  churches  should    be    taught    from 
the   outset   to   discharge  their  proper   responsibilities, 
and  the  missions  should  guard  against  assuming  these 
responsibilities  for  them. 

(2)  IVIissionaries  should  not  become  members  of  the 
ecclesiastical  councils  of  the  native  church  save  as 
corresponding  members,  or  in  advisory  capacities. 

(3)  The  primary  character  of  the  missionary  as  a 
spiritual  agent  should  be  kept  always  predominant. 
Personal  holiness  and  spiritual  authority,  not  financial 
resources  or  administrative  or  ecclesiastical  authority, 
should  constitute  his  power  and  influence. 

(4)  The  foundations  of  the  native  church  should 
be  laid  not  upon  ideas  of  mechanical  authority  and 


The  Science  of  Missions  65 

ecclesiastical  organization,  but    upon    conceptions    of 
spiritual  and  personal  service  and  responsibility. 

(5)  With  clear  lines  of  demarcation  between  the 
functions  of  the  native  church  and  the  mission  estab- 
lished and  recognized,  there  will  be  much  freedom 
from  perplexity  and  misunderstanding  otherwise  un- 
avoidable, and  as  little  as  possible  to  mar  that  display 
of  confidence  and  love  toward  the  native  church  which 
is  essential  to  kindly  and  efficient  cooperation. 

3.  As  to  self-support  and  the  use  of  money  in  mis- 
sion work  these  seem  to  me  to  be  a  few  of  the  principles 
to  be  observed : 

(i)  Each  body  of  converts  is  responsible  for  the 
expenses  of  its  own  religious  instruction  and  worship 
and  pastoral  care.  The  converts  supported  their  old 
religion.  They  cannot  expect  that  mission  funds 
given  in  the  main  by  the  poor,  or  those  of  moderate 
means,  and  for  the  evangelization  of  the  heathen,  can 
to  any  great  extent  or  for  any  length  of  time,  be  drawn 
upon  for  the  expenses  of  their  religious  life.  Mis- 
sionary supervision  they  should  have  freely.  What 
they  receive  beyond  is  of  grace  not  of  debt. 

(2)  "  Self-support  as  regards  church  expenses 
among  native  Christians  should  be  anticipated  and 
prepared  for  at  the  very  earliest  stage." 

(3)  Christianity  is  a  living  and  divine  religion,  and 
the  spiritual  force  that  is  in  it  is  sufficient  to  make  it 
take  root  and  spread  wherever  it  is  propagated  as  a 
religion  of  life  and  divine  power.  As  the  Rev.  S.  A. 
Moffett  wrote  on  returning  from  a  furlough  to  his 
work  in  Pyeng  Yang,  in  Northern  Korea : 

"  T  am  rejoiced  to  be  at  work  again,  and  am  very 
deeply  impressed  with  the  genuineness  of  the  work 


66        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

here.  I  cannot  but  feel  that  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
from  the  very  beginning  nothing  but  the  plain  simple 
truths  of  the  gospel  have  been  urged  upon  these  peo- 
ple, and  that  these  truths  have  been  allowed  to  w^ork 
out  their  own  effect.  Oh !  how  I  wish  it  might  be 
emphasized  and  reemphasized  the  world  over,  that  the 
gospel  alone  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation,  and 
that  the  gospel  alone  can  do  and  does  for  these  people 
all  that  it  has  done  and  does  for  us.  The  introduction 
of  other  appeals  based  upon  financial,  educational,  or 
other  advantages,  which  draw  the  attention  from  the 
central  truth  of  salvation  from  sin,  weaken  the  appeal, 
and  in  so  far  as  they  enter  into  the  lives  of  the  people, 
deprive  them  of  spiritual  power  and  strong  faith." 

(4)  Men  should  not  be  paid  by  missions  for  doing 
what  they  ought  to  do  as  disciples  freely. 

(5)  Native  salaries  should  be  paid  on  the  same 
basis  as  missionary  salaries.  The  missionaries  work 
not  for  what  they  can  extort  or  what  they  are  worth 
in  a  market  of  supply  and  demand.  Native  workers 
should  be  provided  for  in  the  same  way.  Missions 
are  blundering  sadly,  which  encourage  the  mercenary 
spirit. 

(6)  Native  workers  ought  always  to  be  employed 
only  after  careful  consideration,  and  for  work  which 
it  would  be  obviously  wrong  to  expect  any  one  to  do 
freely.  More  evil  is  done  by  employing  wrong  men 
or  men  for  wrong  work  than  by  failing  to  employ 
right  ones  or  for  right  work. 

(7)  "As  little  paid  work  as  necessary,  as  much 
work  of  love  and  gift,  as  possible."  is  a  good  rule. 
The  best  missions  endeavour  to  have  as  few  paid  help- 
ers as  possible,  and  as  many  as  necessary,  not  as  many 
as  possible. 


The  Science  of  Missions  67 

4.  I  believe  in  one  Church  of  Christ  in  each  mis- 
sion field.  I  believe  all  denominations  should  unite 
in  establishing  one  Church.  Where  this  is  not  prac- 
ticable because  of  the  unwillingness  of  any,  there 
should  be  comity: 

(i)  In  the  scale  of  salaries  for  native  workers  in 
the  employ  of  different  missions.  (2)  In  the  recog- 
nition by  each  mission  of  the  acts  of  discipline  in  the 
sphere  of  another  mission.  (3)  In  the  support  of 
schools,  especially  higher  schools.  (4)  In  printing 
establishments ;  one  should  be  enough  for  any  mission 
station.  (5)  In  hospitals;  one  should  be  enough  for 
most  mission  stations,  or  two,  one  for  men  and  one 
for  women.  (6)  In  divisions  of  territory  that  will 
give  separate  fields  to  different  churches.  (7)  In 
the  fellowship  and  spiritual  union  of  native  Christians 
if  missions  are  not  willing  to  let  them  unite  organically. 

It  may  be  at  once  admitted  that  in  the  attempt  at 
last  to  settle  upon  and  to  give  expression  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  a  sound  mission  policy  there  is  no  need  of 
precipitancy.  The  deliberation  with  which  these  prin- 
ciples have  been  developed  would  indicate  that  we  are 
in  little  danger  of  undue  haste.  But  the  time  has  come 
when  we  should  attempt  to  frame  the  science  of  mis- 
sions. We  have  been  doing  this  piece  by  piece,  from 
year  to  year.  We  should  complete  this  work  so  far 
as  we  are  able.  And  the  voice  of  the  confusionist,  of 
the  missionary  antinomian,  of  the  experimentalist, 
ought  not  to  deter  us.  Many  among  the  missionaries 
are  waiting  for  a  satisfactory  statement  of  a  full  mis- 
sion policy,  and  all  who  have  anything  to  do  with  the 
appointment  of  new  missionaries  know  how  confused 
they  stand  before  this  vast  problem  when  told  that  no 
guide  to  its  solution  can  be  placed  in  their  hands. 

The  difficulties  and  importance  of  this  duty  should 


68         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

not  be  either  under  or  overestimated.  There  is  no 
other  work  in  the  world  so  complicated,  so  huge  in  its 
purposes  and  field.  And  all  attempts  to  formulate  the 
principles  of  it  are  of  Httle  value  in  comparison  with 
the  prosecution  of  the  work  itself.  Moreover,  wher- 
ever there  is  spiritual  life  and  power  there  will  be 
blessing,  even  in  the  face  of  mistakes  of  policy.  But 
if  the  principles  of  a  sound  science  of  missions  can  be 
drawn  out  there  will  be  great  saving  of  time  and 
strength  and  money,  and  the  spiritual  force  which 
has  ever  marked  pre-eminently  the  foreign  missionary 
enterprise  will  have  freer  course  and  will  accomplish 
even  greater  results.  It  would  be  unfortunate  if  the 
missionary  work  hardened  into  cold,  formalized  rules, 
but  the  spirit  of  life  follows  divine  principles.  The 
science  of  missions  should  be  the  formulation  of  these 
principles. 


VII 

THE  KIND  OF  MEN  NEEDED   IN  FOREIGN  MIS- 
SIGNS 

TWO  wrong  replies  are  constantly  given  to  the 
question :  "  What  kind  of  men  are  needed  in 
the  foreign  mission  field  ? "  One  is  that 
any  kind  of  man  will  do,  and  that  good  men 
should  not  "  throw  their  lives  away  on  the  heathen." 
I  have  heard  of  theological  professors  even  urging 
upon  men  of  special  power  the  superior  need  for  them 
at  home.  The  other  is  that  none  but  intellectual  giants 
can  cope  with  the  subtle  philosophies  and  the  keen 
minds  of  the  East. 

The  right  answer  is  that  men  are  wanted  who  have 
the  qualities  of  spiritual  leadership.  Among  these 
qualities  are  good  sense,  open  and  comprehensive 
judgment,  some  measure  of  personal  power,  that  ten- 
derness of  sympathy  which  may  be  called  by  many 
names,  and  a  deep  and  true  and  prayerful  life.  Good 
sense  is  needed  to  show  a  man  the  course  of  action 
needed  to  secure  an  end,  and  the  moment  to  strike; 
but  so  many  new  elements  enter  into  the  determination 
of  siich  questions  in  a  strange,  new  land,  that  men 
are  needed  who  can  see  conditions  and  understand 
them,  penetrate  through  situations,  unravelling  their 
tangles,  and  lay  out  constructive  lines  of  procedure. 

Men  are  wanted  who  have  something  wdthin  which 
of  necessity  leaps  out  to  influence  others.  Feeble  men 
who  never  led  or  influenced  any  one  at  home  are  prob- 
ably destitute  of  the  power  of  personality  which  would 
enable  them  to  influence  or  lead  men  abroad.  Men 
between  whose  judgment  and  will  there  are  no  rela- 
tions, are  probably  unfit.     The  needed  man  is  he  of 

69 


7o         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  positive  opinion,  (deliberately  formed,  steadily  and 
unwaveringly  pursued  and  expressed  in  consecutive 
action.  At  the  same  time  a  man  may  be  all  this,  and 
yet  cold  and  unattractive.  There  is  a  tenderness  of 
heart  which  is  sister  to  a  humble  spirit  like  Christ's, 
and  which  yet  is  a  very  empress  over  men  and  makes 
its  possessor  a  leader,  while  it  robs  leadership  of  its 
perils.  But  all  these  perils  disappear  and  personal 
power  is  magnified  indefinitely  by  a  life  of  single  de- 
votion and  deep  prayerfulness. 

The  best  that  the  Church  has  at  home  is  not  too 
good  for  the  foreign  mission  field.  There  is  room 
there  for  all  human  talents.  The  opportunity  for  gen- 
eral human  service  in  science,  philanthropy,  political 
study,  and  all  the  branches  of  human  interest  and 
helpfulness,  the  need  of  men  who  can  furnish  the  most 
powerful  sympathetic  ties  between  East  and  West,  at 
a  time  when  diplomacy  and  commerce  are  irritating 
and  alienating,  the  establishment,  organization  and 
direction  of  great  national  churches,  which  are  to 
surpass  in  membership  all  the  present  churches  of  the 
West,  the  intricacy  and  incalculable  importance  of  the 
problems  thus  arising,  the  very  existence  of  Christi- 
anity on  its  present  foundations,  challenged  as  to  its 
exclusive  claims  by  the  ethnic  religions — these  are  but 
a  few  of  the  reasons  for  the  demand  on  the  part  of 
the  mission  field  for  the  best  the  Church  has. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  needs  ever  to  be  remembered 
that  human  history  is  not  the  product  of  the  schools 
and  the  scholars,  but  of  the  lowlv.  the  common  man 
as  well — of  the  man  who  knows  the  heart  of  man  and 
can  speak  to  it.  And  w^e  easily  exairgerate  in  our 
thoughts  the  superb  reasoning  qualities  and  the  keen 
metaphysical  power  of  the  heathen.  The  average 
American  is   far  more    intelligent,    better    informed, 


Kind  of  Men  Needed  in  Foreign  Missions    71 

keener  in  argument  than  the  average  Asiatic.  More- 
over, any  Westerner  is  supported  in  Asia  or  Africa 
by  the  prestige  of  the  West ;  though  not  a  specially 
able  man,  he  is  treated  as  in  some  sense  the  represent- 
ative of  the  West.  The  very  position,  moreover,  with 
its  responsibilities  and  new  problems,  and  his  repre- 
sentative capacity,  act  on  him  as  military  discipline 
on  a  soldier,  and  make  of  him  a  sharper  and  more 
reliant  man. 

Furthermore,  we  easily  err  in  imagining  that  this 
world  runs  by  reasoned  argument  and  persuasion.  It 
is  not  so  with  us.  It  is  less  so  in  the  East,  where 
custom  rules  life.  As  Pascal  has  said :  "  We  must 
not  mistake  ourselves,  we  have  as  much  that  is  auto- 
matic in  us  as  intellectual,  and  hence  it  comes  that  the 
instrument  by  which  persuasion  is  brought  about  is  not 
demonstration  alone.  How  few  things  are  demon- 
strated !  Proofs  can  only  convince  the  mind ;  custom 
makes  our  strongest  proofs  and  those  which  we  hold 
most  firmly.  It  sways  the  automaton,  which  draws  the 
unconscious  intellect  after  it.  Who  has  demonstrated 
that  there  will  be  a  to-morrow,  or  that  we  shall  die ; 
yet  what  is  more  universally  believed?  It  is  then 
custom  that  convinces  us  of  it,  custom  that  makes  so 
many  men  Christians,  custom  that  makes  them  Turks, 
heathen,  artisans,  soldiers."  And  the  man  who  knows 
himself  and  for  himself,  and  whose  mind  is  clear,  his 
heart  kind,  and  his  will  strong,  and  who  loves  Christ 
and  is  willing  to  go,  will  find  a  place  awaiting  him 
abroad — a  place,  too,  greater  than  any  he  is  at  all 
likely  to  find  at  home. 

A  happy  spirit  and  pluck,  rather  enjoying  hardship, 
are  two  good  qualities  in  a  missionary.  Coleridge 
Patteson  w^anted  for  his  work  "  bright,  cheerful,  happy 
fellows."     There  is  much  to  discourage.     The  air  is 


72         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

full  of  despondency  and  hopelessness,  the  results  of 
heathenism.  And  there  are  undoubted  hardships — the 
necessity  of  absence  from  home,  discomforts  in  itinerat- 
ing work,  constant  contact  with  the  putrid  life  of  non- 
Christian  lands.  Men  who  are  blue  of  disposition,  and 
who  instinctively  run  rather  than  fight,  will  have  an 
im comfortable   time. 

The  conditions  under  which  the  foreign  missionary 
does  his  work  have  a  great  influence  on  character.  He 
is  alone,  among  people  of  standing  inferior  to  his.  It 
is  true  that  in  some  countries  there  are  many  who 
affect  to  despise  him ;  Mohammedan  mollahs,  Con- 
fucian scholars,  Hindu  priests,  Japanese  of  different 
sorts — but  most  of  these  have  at  bottom  a  real  respect 
for  him.  Even  where  he  disavows  and  denies  it,  he 
is  still  regarded  as  a  representative  of  the  powerful 
and  pitiless  Western  nations  which  are  back  of  him 
with  mailed  hands. 

Yet,  though  respected,  and  by  the  common  people 
and  the  poor  often  unduly  exalted,  he  is  isolated.  He 
has  come  with  something  to  give.  So  coming,  he 
asserts  his  superiority.  Yet  no  influence  about  him 
contributes  to  feeding  the  springs  from  which  his 
superiority  flows.  There  are  no  better  men  around 
him.  Professor  Drummond  called  this  the  saddest 
feature  of  a  missionary's  life.  There  is  much  to  en- 
courage dictatorialness,  dogmatic  as%prtiveness,  sloth- 
fulness,  spiritual  indolence,  mere  formality  of  service, 
weakening  of  moral  fibre  and  tone,  degeneration  of 
standard  and  ideal  for  self  and  others,  a  general  pro- 
fessionalism of  work  touched  with  kindness  and  forced 
conscientiousness  and  a  little  despondency.  Mission- 
aries testify  to  the  reality  of  these  perils.  The  men  and 
women  who  go  to  the  mission  field  must  be  able  to 
stand    against    them.      The  abilitv  to  stand    cannot 


Kind  of  Men  Needed  in  Foreign  Missions    73 

be  acquired  by  mere  geographical  transplanting.  Who- 
ever would  resist  all  such  temptations  must  have  the 
qualifications  therefor  in  this  country  before  ever 
setting  forth  on  his  mission. 

And  on  the  positive  side  the  missionary  should  be 
able  to  make  a  definite  spiritual  impression  on  the  lives 
of  men,  many  of  whom  have  been  devoid  of  all  save 
the  most  elementary  spiritual  notions  and  to 
whom  all  our  spiritual  world  with  its  ideas  is 
unintelligible.  Perhaps  even  words  are  lacking  in 
which  to  express  our  notions.  Or  old  systems  of 
belief  are  to  be  confronted,  whose  standards  run  fair 
athwart  the  teachings  of  the  gospel,  and  have  in  some 
cases  so  woven  themselves  into  the  social  and  civil 
life  of  the  people  that  Christianity  is  literally  a  revolu- 
tionary assault  upon  the  very  foundations  of  their  in- 
stitutions. Problems  of  intricate  perplexity  need  to  be 
solved.  Hardships,  the  more  difficult  because  they  are 
not  romantic  and  bear  no  kinship  to  martyrdom,  must 
be  endured.  Hard,  trying  work  must  be  done.  Little 
by  little,  spiritual  impression  must  be  made ;  sur- 
rounded all  the  time  by  the  grossest  materialism  and 
superstition,  the  spiritual  ideals  must  yet  never  be 
clouded  or  lost  for  an  instant.  The  people  of  the  world 
are  ready  to  have  their  bodies  cared  for,  and  to  be  put 
in  the  way  of  greater  material  prosperity.  They  do 
not  wish  for  spiritual  revolution  or  the  holiness  of 
Christ.  The  temptation  to  spend  life  in  giving  them 
what  they  are  willing  to  receive,  and  to  constrict  or  to 
neglect  the  efifort  to  give  them  what  they  need,  what 
Christ  came  that  they  might  receive,  the  Revelation 
of  the  Father,  the  Way,  the  Life  abundant,  the 
Heavenly  Calling,  what  our  mission  exists  for,  must 
be  sternly  throttled. 

That  men  may  be  able  to  resist  these  temptations, 


74         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  do  the  vital  spiritual  work,  which  is  our  supreme 
business,  they  must  have  qualifications  of  character 
and  capacity,  assured  and  vindicated  here  before  they 
go.  And  among  these  qualifications  should  be  set 
first,  the  need  of  a  deep  and  holy  life.  There  are  two 
words  of  Christ  which  must  be  familiar  to  every  mis- 
sionary and  which  should  have  been  received  and  ab- 
sorbed into  life  by  the  missionary  candidate.  One 
He  spoke  first  to  the  woman  of  Sychar:  "  Whosoever 
shall  drink  of  the  water  tjiat  I  shall  give  him  shall 
never  thirst,  but  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall 
become  in  him  a  well  of  water  springing  up  unto 
eternal  life."  The  other  He  cried  as  He  stood  in 
Jerusalem  on  the  last,  the  great  day  of  the  Feast  of 
Tabernacles :  "  H  any  man  thirst  let  him  come  vmto 
Me  and  drink.  He  that  believeth  on  Me  as  the  Scrip- 
ture hath  said,  out  of  the  depths  of  his  life  shall  flow 
rivers  of  living  water."  The  new  missionary  joins 
some  little  company  of  men  and  women  who  are  al- 
ready under  the  fullest  strain.  He  dare  not  draw  on 
them  for  spiritual  life.  There  is  none  in  the  sur- 
rounding hopeless,  lifeless  people.  If  he  has  no  springs 
within  him  where  the  Living  Water  is  flowing,  woe  to 
him !  Can  he  give  to  others  if  his  own  supply  is 
scant?  And  the  missionary's  life  must  be  a  holy  life, 
a  life  of  holy  gentleness,  holy  purity,  holy  love.  It  is 
to  be  subject  to  fearful  strain.  It  will  have  to  give  to 
others  at  times  when  in  heat,  discomfort,  fever,  dirt, 
it  is  needing  most  to  receive,  when  endurance  is  tested 
to  the  uttermost.  It  will  break  under  this  trial  if  not 
profoundly  held  by  the  power  of  Him  before  whom 
the  seraphim  called  to  one  another  through  the  smoke 
of  the  temple  while  the  pillars  rocked  to  and  fro. 
"  Holy,  Holy,  Holy."  I  know  of  a  missionary  whom 
the  natives  called  "  ]\Ir.  Angry  Face,"  because  at  times 


Kind  of  Men  Needed  in  Foreign  Missions    75 

he  so  lost  control  of  himself,  as  to  blaze  on  them  with 
wrath.  It  may  not  be  so  with  the  man  who  would 
please  Christ. 

A  second  qualification  is  the  spirit  of  willing  sacri- 
fice, in  the  sense  of  endurance  of  hardness  as  a  good 
soldier,  and  of  surrender  of  all  devotion  to  comfort 
and  ease.  The  lot  of  the  missionary  is  much  easier 
in  these  regards  than  it  used  to  be,  and  in  many  places 
is  devoid  of  special  privation.  But  where  men  would 
do  what  needs  to  be  done  in  reaching  the  people,  in 
thorough  and  far-reaching  itinerating  work  in  country 
and  villages,  in  energetic  and  unresting  activity,  they 
will  have  to  esteem  home  and  the  companionship  of 
loved  ones  and  ease  and  pleasant  surroundings,  as  of 
less  account  than  Christ  and  souls.  Men  are  wanted 
who  will  be  willing  to  be  absent  from  home  most  of 
the  time,  and  who  will  regard  themselves  as  on  a 
campaign  and  not  as  sitting  down  in  a  parish.  And 
this  spirit  must  be  ready  to  count  life  as  lightly  as 
Paul  counted  it.  I  do  not  mean  that  martyrdom 
awaits  us,  but  we  must  be  ready  to  spend  ourselves 
utterly. 

"  Sin  worketh. 

Let   me   work   too. 

Sin  undoeth, 

Let  me  do. 
Busy  as  sin  my  work  I  ply 
'Till  I  rest  in  the  rest  of  eternity." 

We  must  not  only  be  willing  to  burn  up  for  God, 
if  that  unlikely  fate  should  befall.  We  must  be 
actually  burning  out  for  God  now,  toiling,  striving, 
driving;  knowing  that  we  must  work  the  works  of 
Him  that  sent  us  while  it  is  day;  for  the  night  cometh, 
when  no  man  can  work  any  more.     And  this  qualifi- 


76         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cation  must  be  put  in  evidence  by  the  missionary 
candidate  here  and  now.  Is  he  likely  to  be  a  flaming 
fire  in  the  service  of  his  God  in  Asia,  if  he  is  not 
one  here  in  the  United  States? 

If  I  have  set  these  spiritual  qualifications  so  promi- 
nently in  the  foreground  it  is  because  I  believe  that 
we  are  in  danger  of  magnifying  other  aspects  of  the 
mission  vv^ork  above  its  primary  spiritual  character, 
and  of  forgetting  that  the  world's  evangelization  is  a 
spiritual  work,  a  work  of  spiritual  influence,  and  that 
the  man  who  is  not  fit  for  it  spiritually  in  the  fullest 
sense,  though  he  may  do  much  good,  is  not  a  man  after 
God's  own  heart,  doing  all  His  will.  But  next  to  these 
requirements  I  would  place  the  need  of  a  solid,  balanced 
judgment,  and  of  a  clear,  grave,  alert  mind.  A  man  can- 
not have  more  brains  in  quantity  than  God  has  given 
him,  but  he  can  improve  their  quality,  and  if  they 
be  phenomenal  or  not  is  of  little  consequence,  if  so  be 
that  only  he  has  disciplined  them  and  got  them  in 
hand,  so  that  they  go  square  at  any  problem  set  for 
them,  and  are  reliable  and  true  in  their  judgments,  and 
honest  and  unflinching.  The  mission  work  demands 
thought  and  study  and  the  faculty  of  decision  and 
determination  on  the  basis  of  facts  examined  and  con- 
ditions understood.  The  missionary  candidate  must 
learn  how  to  use  his  mind,  delivering  it  of  all  fancies 
and  caprices.  There  are  many  men  who  are  not  de- 
ficient in  mental  gifts,  but  who  are  deficient  in  that 
steady,  well  tempered  adjustment  of  will  to  mind 
wherein  the  former  holds  the  latter  true  to  the  de- 
mands of  each  given  task,  and  then  taking  the  results 
pushes  all  life  and  work  up  to  them.  Good,  grave 
sense ;  solid,  clear,  unexcited  action ;  quiet,  steady  will 
— ^these  are  qualifications  which,  with  a  deep,  holy, 
devoted  life,  make  up  the  required  man. 


Kind  of  Men  Needed  in  Foreign  Missions    77 

He  should  be  a  free  man — belonging  to  no  prej- 
udice, and  no  person,  save  to  the  One  who  bought 
him,  and  to  those  who  have  been  given  him  to  love ; 
open  to  large  ideas  and  yet  also  to  fidelity  to  the  good 
that  has  already  come.  The  candidate  will  have  a 
vast  deal  to  learn  after  reaching  the  field.  Let  him 
believe  this,  and  not  go  as  though  knowing  all.  One 
of  the  dangers  of  the  Student  Volunteer  Movement  is 
that  its  members  may,  with  their  fine  preparation  and 
great  advantages,  forget  that  they  are  only  preparing 
to  learn,  and  scarcely  learning  as  yet.  To  be  sympa- 
thetic, humble,  large  minded,  progressive  on  the  for- 
eign field,  the  missionary  candidate  must  be  these  now. 

And  there  is  no  new  gospel  with  which  he  needs  to 
familiarize  himself,  or  which  is  desired  on  the  mission 
field.  The  old  gospel  is  the  only  gospel.  No  men 
are  wanted  whose  theologies  have  lost  hold  of  the 
divine  Christ,  the  Cross  of  Calvary,  and  the  Holiness 
of  God.  It  is  true  that  many  men  with  weak,  and 
unarticulated  convictions  have  been  forced  in  the  face 
of  heathenism  and  the  evident  sin  of  the  world,  to  a 
Biblical  and  substantial  faith ;  but  it  is  a  risk  to  send 
such  men.  Men  rather  are  needed  who  have  experi- 
enced the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  know  and  believe  it 
as  the  only  gospel  of  God.  Such  men  will  not  be 
blown  to  and  fro  by  every  wind  of  doctrine,  but  will 
stand  calmly  and  peacefully  with  their  feet  on  the 
Everlasting  Rock ;  and  their  calm  and  peace  will  en- 
able them  to  do  in  one  year  what  others  do  in  three, 
and  to  spend  on  the  mission  field  three  years  where 
others  spend  one. 

Some  may  feel  that  these  qualifications  are  too 
high.  I  have  no  words  of  apology  for  that.  I  have 
spoken  of  no  qualifications  which  are  not  wholly  within 
the  reach  of  every  missionary  candidate.     He  should, 


yS         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  course,  have  a  good  constitution  physically  and  the 
will  to  learn  the  language,  but  that  has  been  assumed. 
These  other  requirements  are  such  as  are  denied  to 
no  man  who  will  receive  them.  Christ  stands  ready 
to  give  them  to  any  man  who  will  enter  His  fellow- 
ship and  in  the  education  of  the  abiding  Hfe  submit 
to  be  taught  and  endowed. 

These  qualifications  are  as  old  as  the  Day  of  Pente- 
cost and  the  Upper  Room  and  the  shores  of  Gen- 
nesaret.  There  are  no  nostrums,  no  short  cuts,  no  outer 
embellishments  worth  a  moment's  thought.  We  are 
to  do  the  work  our  Lord  began  in  Galilee.  W'e  need 
for  it  the  qualifications  He  possessed,  none  others.  Let 
us  find  them  where  He  found  them :  "I  came  down 
from  heaven  not  to  do  Mine  own  will,  but  the  will  of 
Him  that  sent  Me,"  and  "  He  that  sent  Me  is  with  ]\Ie. 
He  hath  not  left  Me  alone ;  for  I  do  always  those 
things  that  please  Him."  With  these  qualifications, 
we  shall  be  workmen  not  needing  to  be  ashamed  at 
the  day  of  His  appearing. 

The  supreme  thing  is  that  a  man  should  be  Christ's 
— surrendered  to  Him,  passionately  devoted  to  Him, 
subject  to  His  mind.  That  is  the  supreme  qualifica- 
tion, and  the  man  who  has  not  this  may  be  able  to  do 
many  things,  but  he  will  not  be  such  a  missionary  as 
a  man  of  humbler  gifts  who  yet  has  this  greatest 
gift  of  all. 


VIII 

SOME  CURRENT  CRITICISMS  OF  MISSIONS 

FI\^E  or  six  years  ago  there  appeared  in  the 
North  American  Review,  a  wild  article  by 
some  person  named  Linton,  which  dealt  in  part 
with  what  the  writer  called  "  the  modern  craze 
for  missionary  work,"  which  led  men  and  women  to 
go  off  to  "  unlikely  and  unsympathetic  countries, 
where  the  lives  of  the  missionaries  are  in  danger, 
where  the  converts  they  make  are,  for  the  most  part, 
unredeemed  scoundrels,  and  where  the  civilization  of 
the  people  is  older  and  more  compact  than  our  own, 
better  suited  to  the  needs  of  the  people,  and  of  the 
kind  wherein  morality,  customs  and  religion  are  as 
closely  and  inextricably  intertwined  as  the  fibres  of 
a  plant.  Separate  them  and  you  destroy  the  whole 
structure."  The  writer  went  on  to  denounce  the  mis- 
sionary as  "  impertinent  and  meddlesome,"  and  fan- 
atically blind  to  his  own  wickedness  and  folly.  "  For 
all  the  misery  and  murder  that  may  follow  his  tamper- 
ing with  established  faiths — for  all  the  unsatisfactory 
nature  of  the  conversions  he  may  make — he  goes  on 
in  the  old  path,  and  shuts  his  eyes  to  the  evil  he  so 
diligently  effects.  He  is  impelled  by  the  craze  of 
interference,  and  reason  is  as  a  dumb  dog  while  he 
careers  over  the  ground  mounted  on  the  hippogriff 
of  an  impracticable  and  a  mischievous  enthusiasm." 
This  is  one  type  of  criticism  of  missions,  a  purely 
harmless  type.  The  childish  ignorance  and  petty 
bigotry  which  expresses  itself  in  such  school-boy  ora- 
tion style  probably  is  not  disappointed  in  effecting 
nothing,  for  it  cannot  hope  to  accomplish  anything. 

79 


8o  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Yet  it  will  serve  to  suggest  the  sweeping  opposi- 
tion to  missions  of  those  who  do  not  believe  in  the 
enterprise  in  any  sense  whatever.  That  the  heathen 
of  Christendom  should  see  no  sense  in  carrying  Chris- 
tianity to  their  fellow  heathen  of  heathendom  is  most 
natural ;  but  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  Christian 
should  feel  able  to  accept  Christianity  for  himself  and 
deny  it  to  the  world.  If  it  is  a  good  thing  for  him, 
why  is  it  not  good  for  the  world?  If  it  is  good  for 
the  world,  how  can  he  be  excused  from  giving  it  to  the 
world?  As  an  editorial  in  the  New  York  Tribune, 
about  the  time  of  the  Review  article  quoted,  declared: 
"  The  missionary  impulse  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
Christianity.  Without  it  Christianity  would  be  of  less 
value  to  the  world  than  the  most  ephemeral  mutual 
benefit  society.  The  Church  must  continually  strive 
to  preach  the  good  news  of  the  gorpel  to  every  crea- 
ture, or  else  it  shirks  its  commission,  and  forfeits  its 
right  to  be  numbered  among  the  ethical  forces  of  the 
world." 

That  men  should  criticize  the  methods  of  missions 
and  the  missionaries  themselves  is  natural  and  intelligi- 
ble ;  but  that  they  should  criticize  the  missionary  idea 
betrays  a  total  want  of  appreciation  of  the  nature  of 
Christianity,  and  of  social  obligation,  Christianity 
claims  to  be  the  supreme  good  in  life.  The  obligation 
of  brotherhood  commands  us  to  share  our  good  with 
men.  The  consequent  missionary  duty  would  seem  to 
be  as  plain  as  noonday. 

But  to  many  it  is  not  plain.  Many  who  in  the 
Church  are  forced  to  take  some  attitude  toward  mis- 
sions, and  many  who  outside  cannot  refrain  from 
expressing  their  opinion,  insist  that  though  Christi- 
anity is  good  for  us,  the  other  nations  have  their  own 
religions  which  arc  good  for  them.     But  there  was  a 


Some  Current  Criticisms  of  Missions       8i 

time  when  that  course  of  reasoning  would  have  kept 
the  gospel  from  coming  to  our  ancestors.  And  there 
is  in  Christianity  not  the  slightest  discoverable  justi- 
fication for  the  view  that  it  is  good  for  some  only, 
and  that  something  else  can  be  better  for  others. 
Moreover,  there  are  no  facts  to  show  that  the  supposed 
good  which  other  peoples  possess  can  suffice  in  lieu 
of  Christianity.  A  little  knowledge  overthrows  the 
conceit  that  it  can.  Thus  the  New  York  Post  wrote 
editorially  six  years  ago,  of  the  section  of  China  where 
last  year  the  Boxer  atrocities  shocked  the  world,  "  An- 
other temptation  of  missionary  orators  is  to  ignore 
the  strong  light  which  travel  and  commerce,  the  study 
of  comparative  religions  have  cast  upon  the  question 
of  the  condition  in  this  world  of  non-Christian  peoples. 
Authentic  accounts  of  the  Chinese  of  inland 
and  Northern  China — of  their  splendid  fibre,  physical 
and  intellectual,  of  their  wonderful  civil  and  social 
virtues — make  the  dispatching  of  emissaries  of  our 
civilization  to  them  seem  more  than  ever  bizarre." 
Would  the  Post  say  that  now?  The  simple  fact  is 
that  as  between  the  missionaries'  representations  of  the 
need  of  the  heathen  world  and  the  easy  notions  of 
writers  who  have  not  lived  in  its  darkness,  the  former 
have  been  as  much  nearer  the  truth  as  they  have  had 
better  opportunity  to  judge.  If  they  have  said  that 
the  world  needs  our  faith  just  as  truly  as  we  need  it 
ourselves,  they  have  but  represented  the  facts  as  they 
are.  It  was  a  traveller  who  was  not  a  missionary  who 
said  of  India,  "  An  idea  prevails  that  idolatry  is  not 
to-day  the  evil  and  horrible  thing  that  it  was  when 
the  apostles  exposed  it ;  that  the  '  Ethiopian  has 
changed  his  skin  and  the  leopard  his  spots.'  Idolatry 
in  India  to-day,  as  elsewhere  in  history,  tends  to 
deteriorate  and  not  to  evolve  the  higher  ideals  of  duty 


82         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  religion.  .  .  .  The  Hindu  religion  is  but 
the  deification  of  lust  and  other  evil  passions.  Krishna, 
the  high  Hindu  god,  is  shown  in  its  scriptures  to  be  a 
perjurer,  a  thief,  and  a  murderer.  Such  is  the  obscene 
character  of  the  pictures  and  carvings  in  the  temples 
and  on  the  idol  cars,  that  an  act  of  the  Indian  Legis- 
lature in  1856,  against  obscene  pictures  had  especially 
to  exempt  from  its  operation  '  all  pictures,  drawings, 
or  carvings  in  the  temples,  or  on  the  idol  cars.'  "  And 
the  Hindu,  a  paper  of  orthodox  Hinduism,  said  of  its 
priestly  class,  "  Profoundly  ignorant  as  a  class  and 
infinitely  selfish,  it  is  the  mainstay  of  every  unholy, 
immoral  and  cruel  custom  and  superstition  in  our 
midst,  from  the  wretched  dancing-girl  who  insults  the 
Deity  by  her  existence  to  the  pining  child  widow, 
whose  every  tear  and  every  hair  of  her  head  shall 
stand  up  against  every  one  of  us  who  tolerate  it  on  the 
Day  of  Judgment,  and  of  such  a  priestly  class,  our 
women  are  the  ignorant  tools  and  dupes." 

To  others  it  seems  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  mis- 
sionary appeal  to  allege  that  nothing  is  accomplished 
by  missions,  and  that  it  is  futile  to  support  the  work 
because  the  work  is  futile.  It  is  good  to  answer  these 
criticisms  by  appeal  to  that  newspaper  opinion  which 
the  critics  are  accustomed  to  regard  as  infallible. 
"  Any  attempt  to  estimate  this  thxillingly  interesting 
phenomenon,"  said  the  Boston  Daily  Advertiser,  re- 
garding the  work  of  missions  in  Japan,  "  must  fail 
through  inadequacy  that  does  not  take  largely  into 
account  the  influence  of  Christian  missions.  Nothing; 
but  gross  ignorance  or  invincible  bigotry  can  lead 
anyone  to  overlook  this  aspect  of  the  subject.  For 
there  is  a  bigotry  of  unbelief  every  bit  as  stubborn, 
stolid  and  foolish  as  any  bigotry  of  religion  that  is  or 
ever  was.    They  who  do  not  know  what  they  are  talk- 


Some  Current  Criticisms  of  Missions       83 

ing  about  still  say  that  missionaries  have  made  no 
impression  in  heathendom  except  upon  a  relatively 
small  fraction  of  the  lower  orders  of  mankind.  They 
who  speak  from  knowledge  say  that  in  Japan,  to  take 
that  one  case,  Christian  ideas  have  already  permeated 
the  institutions  and  populations  of  the  country  to  such 
an  extent  that  from  the  Mikado  to  the  humblest  la- 
bourer at  four  cents  a  day,  there  is  no  man  in  the  island 
empire  who  does  not  directly  or  indirectly  feel  the 
influence  of  the  new  religion,  if  not  as  a  spiritual  force, 
at  least  as  a  creative  energy  in  politics,  industry  and 
learning.  Statistics  never  can  do  more  than  dimly 
shadow  forth  the  truth  of  such  a  matter.  Yet  statistics 
prove  that  already  the  faith  of  the  missionaries  has 
found  multiplied  thousands  of  joyful  adherents,  that 
the  mission  schools  are  educating  tens  of  thousands  of 
Japanese  youth,  that  the  missionary  literature  is 
scattered  broadcast  over  that  fertile  field  and  that  in 
all  the  native  professions,  in  the  ranks  of  the  wealthy 
and  powerful,  and  in  all  departments  of  the  govern- 
ment, Christianity  is  deeply  intrenched."  And  the 
missionaries  have  done  this  in  Japan  as  they  have 
done  their  work  everywhere,  with  no  weapon  save  the 
word  of  the  gospel.  The  talk  of  missions  and  gun- 
boats and  of  "  the  arm  of  flesh  "  has  had  just  enough 
justification  to  create  it,  but  not  enough  to  keep  it  alive 
for  a  day.  As  a  social  democrat  in  the  German  parlia- 
ment, occupying  a  position  of  incompatibility  with 
Christianity,  said  once,  "  We  acknowledge  that  there 
has  been  a  healthful  activity  developed  by  the  mission- 
aries in  Africa.  They  have  shown  how  much  every- 
where in  the  world  is  to  be  accomplished  by  patience 
and  love ;  they  have  proved  that  even  with  uncivilized 
tribes,  hearts  which  have  a  fund  of  goodness,  can  ac- 
complish much  without  the  lash  of  compulsion." 


84         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

The  simple  fact  is  that  while  civilization  with  its 
unceasing  pressure  is  moving  everywhere  with  level- 
ling influence  against  the  wrong  customs  and  caste  dis- 
tinctions of  heathen  lands,  the  most  powerful  agency 
for  purity  and  human  elevation,  especially  of  the 
peoples  who  have  been  depressed,  is  found  in  the 
gospel.  As  a  Brahman  gentleman  wrote  in  a  report 
on  a  census  of  Travencore,  for  which  he  was  highly 
rewarded  by  the  Maharajah,  "  By  the  unceasing  efforts 
and  self-denying  earnestness  of  the  learned  body  of 
the  Christian  missionaries  in  the  country,  the  large 
community  of  native  Christians  are  rapidly  advancing 
in  their  moral,  intellectual,  and  material  condition. 
Those  who  have  come  directly  under  their 
influence,  such  as  native  Christians,  have  nearly 
doubled  the  number  of  their  literates  since  1875.  But 
for  them  these  humble  orders  of  Hindu  society  will 
forever  remain  unraised.  Their  material  condition,  I 
dare  say,  will  have  improved  with  the  increased  wage?, 
improved  labour  market,  better  laws,  and  more  gener- 
ous treatment  from  an  enlightened  government  like 
ours;  but  to  the  Christian  missionaries  belongs  the 
credit  of  having  gone  to  their  humble  dwellings,  and 
awakened  them  to  a  sense  of  a  better  earthly  ex- 
istence. This  action  of  the  missionaries  was  not  a 
mere  improvement  upon  ancient  history,  a  kind  of 
polishing  and  refining  of  an  existing  model,  but  an 
entirely  original  idea,  conceived  and  carried  out  with 
commendable  zeal,  and  oftentimes  in  the  teeth  of  op- 
position and  persecution.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  slave,  or  the  amelioration  of  the  labour- 
er's condition,  for  those  always  existed  more  or  less  in 
our  past  humane  government.  But  the  heroism  of 
raising  the  low  from  the  slough  of  degradation  and 
debasement  was  an  element  of  civilization  unknown  to 


Some  Current  Criticisms  of  Missions       85 

ancient  India.  The  Brahman  community  of  Southern 
India  are  not  doing  to  the  lower  classes  what  the 
casteless  Britisher  is  doing  to  them.  The  credit  of 
this  philanthropy  of  going  to  the  houses  of  the  low, 
the  distressed,  and  the  dirty,  and  putting  the  shoulder 
to  the  wheel  of  depraved  humanity,  belongs  to  the 
Englishman.  I  do  not  think  the  Brahmans,  or  even 
the  high-caste  non-Brahmans  can  claim  this  credit." 

Of  course  the  men  and  women  who  have  done  this 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  work  of  missions  are  not  per- 
fect, and  no  one  realizes  this  more  than  they  do  them- 
selves. Of  course  their  methods  are  not  perfect,  but 
no  one  is  more  anxious  to  make  them  so  than  they. 
And  neither  the  imperfections  of  the  missionaries,  nor 
the  imperfections  of  their  methods  are  so  great  as  to 
justify  a  neglect  of  the  work  of  missions.  Of  the 
former,  the  Hindu,  which  is  the  most  influential  Indian 
newspaper  in  South  India,  says,  "  They  are  not  as 
a  class  very  brilliant  men,  but  possess  average  ability, 
and  a  few  of  them  are  really  magnificent  men.  But 
it  is  not  so  much  their  intellectual  as  their  moral  qual- 
ities that  challenge  admiration.  Their  simple  lives, 
their  sympathy  with  the  poor,  their  self-sacrifice,  all 
force  admiration  from  their  critics."  Could  more 
than  this  be  said  of  any  class  of  men  at  home?  And 
what  are  the  wrong  methods  which  warrant  criticism? 
It  is  said  that  the  missionaries  reproduce  the  divisions 
of  Christendom  and  confuse  the  heathen.  That  is  not 
true.  The  native  converts  of  most  missions  know 
nothing  whatever  of  the  divisions  of  Christendom ; 
and  when  they  meet  converts  of  another  mission,  do 
not  know  that  they  are  not  of  the  same  church.  It 
is  said  that  the  missionaries  occupy  the  same  territory 
and  quarrel  among  themselves.  Here  and  there  a 
better  distribution  of  the  forces  might  be  made;  but 


S6         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

it  would  be  called  for  not  by  the  fact  that  there  is  not 
room  enough  where  the  missionaries  are,  but  simply  by 
the  desirability  of  reaching  as  great  territories  as  pos- 
sible. And  so  one  might  go  on.  But  why?  If  the 
men  are  poor  and  the  methods  bad,  it  is  the  business 
of  the  Church  to  send  better  men  and  to  propose  better 
methods.    The  whole  enterprise  is  in  its  hands. 

In  truth,  criticism  is  born  of  unjustifiable  ignorance 
or  is  simply  a  cover  for  opposition.  Men  don't  want 
to  do  anything  for  missions.  They  don't  want  to 
give.  They  don't  want  to  be  bothered  with  the  sense 
of  duty.  Their  own  Christianity  is  just  a  sham,  a 
superficial  thing.  It  is  not  of  any  real  value  to  them, 
and  they  do  not  feel  drawn  to  make  sacrifices  or  to  go 
to  trouble  to  propagate  a  sham,  or  to  carry  to  people 
who  believe  in  Islam,  a  Christianity  in  which  they 
themselves  do  not  believe.  When  men  truly  believe  in 
Christ,  they  will  fling  the  little  cavils  by  which  they 
benumb  their  consciences  to  the  winds,  and  will  gird 
themselves  and  go. 


IX 


THE    ASSUMPTION    UNDERLYING    MISSIONARY 
CRITICISM 

THE  recent  book  of  Mr.  Stafford  Ransome, 
with  its  criticisms  of  missions  in  Japan,  re- 
vived for  a  few  days  in  the  newspapers  the  in- 
destructible dislike  of  Christian  missions  and 
disbelief  in  the  enterprise.  Such  revivals  do  no  harm, 
On  the  contrary  free  criticism  yields  great  advantages. 
If  prompted  by  a  bad  spirit,  it  at  least  shows  that  the 
work  is  conspicuous  and  sufficiently  effective  to  chal- 
lenge attention ;  if  by  a  spirit  of  religious  indifference 
or  of  vindictive  animosity,  the  missionary  movement 
benefits  by  the  contrast.  On  the  other  hand,  sincere 
and  honest  criticism,  intended  to  correct  and  improve, 
is  to  be  welcomed  ever.  None  welcome  it  more  than 
missionaries.  "  Let  me  say,"  said  Bishop  Steere, 
"  that  all  missionaries  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  those 
who  call  attention  to  the  mistakes  and  failures  of  mis- 
sions." What  is  exasperating,  is  to  have  men  who 
know  no  missionaries,  and  who  have  never  honestly 
examined  their  work,  whose  own  life  either  by  its 
omissions,  or  by  its  commissions,  betrays  a  total  un- 
apprehension  of  the  real  significance  of  Christianity, 
pronounce  dogmatic  and  universal  judgments,  too 
often  flavoured  by  a  sneer. 

If  criticism  of  missions  is  both  welcome  and  valu- 
able, it  is  very  desirable  to  distinguish  the  different 
classes  of  critics.  Some  assail  Christian  missions  out 
of  spite  and  for  personal  ends.  Unscrupulous  natives 
whom  missionaries  or  the  missionary  societies  have 
exposed  in  their  dishonest  schemes,  or  foreigners 
whose  business  or  personal  life  is  condemned  by  th€ 

87 


88         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

mere  presence  of  a  missionary  and  the  stern  sanctions 
of  Christian  morahty,  make  up  one  dishonourable  class. 
A  second  and  honourable  one  comprises  those  who  be- 
lieve that  the  methods  of  missions  and  the  standard 
of  devotion  can  be  improved.  I  have  met  few  mis- 
sionaries who  do  not  belong  to  this  class  of  critics. 
Beyond  these  two  classes,  there  are  the  men  who  do 
not  believe  in  the  missionary  idea.  Christianity  to 
them  is  simply  one  of  the  world's  religions,  well 
adapted  to  the  West,  but  not  to  be  thrust  upon  un- 
willing Eastern  nations.  This  is  the  principle  of  most 
of  the  popular  opposition  or  indifference  to  foreign 
missions. 

I  believe  this  is  true  of  the  critics  of  missions  in 
the  Church.  Innumerable  pretexts  are  advanced  first 
for  indifference,  the  need  at  home,  the  failure  of  the 
enterprise,  the  inferiority  of  the  missionaries,  but  these 
fall  away  and  disclose  at  last  a  radical  disagreement 
with  the  fundamental  principle  of  missions.  Beyond 
their  philanthropic,  educational,  civilizing  character 
and  claims  lies  their  vital  religious  genius.  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  Saviour  of  humanity  and  the  completion 
of  human  life  and  the  union  of  mankind  with  its 
Father.  And  He  is  the  full  way,  truth  and  life. 
Neither  is  there  salvation  in  any  other.  This  is  not 
a  fiat  of  divine  law.  It  is  the  statement,  of 
a  fact  of  our  moral  constitution.  "  Such "  as 
Harnack  writes,  "  is  the  creed  of  the  Christian 
Church.  \\\\h  this  creed  she  began;  in  the  faith 
of  it  her  martyrs  have  died ;  and  to-day,  as  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago,  it  is  from  this  creed  that  she  de- 
rives her  strength.  The  whole  substance  and  meaning 
of  religion,  life  in  God,  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  conso- 
lation in  suffering,  she  couples  with  Christ's  person; 
and  in  so  doing  she  associates  everything  that  gives 


Assumption  Underlying  Missionary  Criticism  89 

life  its  meaning  and  its  permanence,  nay,  the  Eternal 
itself  with  an  historical  fact."  Now  this  faith  goes, 
the  moment  the  principle  of  the  ethnic  and  partial  mis- 
sion of  Christianity  is  adopted.  And  that  principle  is 
adopted  consciously  or  unconsciously,  not  by  the  crit- 
ics only,  but  by  the  merely  indifferent  in  the  Church. 
Furthermore  these  people,  in  so  adopting  this  view, 
vacate  Christianity  of  its  real  content.  If  they  have  no 
universal  faith,  a  faith  demanding  universal  propaga- 
tion, they  have  no  faith  at  all  cognate  with  the  great 
Christian  conviction  of  the  centuries,  and  they  surren- 
der the  very  salvation  of  Christ.  Let  any  one  read 
Dr.  DuBose's  Soteriology,  and  see  what  it  is  that 
Christ  is  and  does,  and  how  He  is  nothing  for  one  man 
if  He  is  not  everything  for  a  world  of  men. 

It  is  so  obvious  that  it  needs  scarcely  to  be  pointed 
out,  that  this  manner  of  thought  is  the  assumption  of 
the  critics  of  missions  without  the  Church.  They  have 
never  known  Christ  in  their  own  lives.  How  can  they 
be  expected  to  deem  Him  essential  to  the  world? 
Would  not  a  recognition  of  the  essential  principle  of 
missions  be  their  own  most  pertinent  self-condemna- 
tion ?  But  we  may  surely  invite  these  men  to  con- 
sider one  inquiry.  Apart  altogether  from  criticisms 
of  person  or  fact,  from  exact  specification  from  which 
these  critics  hold  so  bashfully  aloof,  may  we  not  ask 
them,  at  what  points  ought  the  Christian  nations  and 
the  non-Christian  nations  to  come  in  contact  ?  "  On 
the  plane  of  diplomacy  and  international  relations  of 
course,"  they  answer,  "  and  this  not  with  any  senti- 
mental intent,  but  with  a  view  to  commerce."  And 
with  many  this  is  the  final  answer. 

Dollars,  trade,  barter,  this  is  life,  its  fulness  and  its 
goal.  But,  unfortunately  this  is  not  all.  Commerce 
has  carried  with  it  all  over  the  world  the  blasting  vices 


90         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  the  West.  It  has,  with  all  its  pure  and  honourable 
ministry,  yet  created  with  diabolic  ingenuity  the  vi- 
lest wants,  and  poured  into  Manila,  the  South  Sea  Is- 
lands, Africa,  Alaska,  a  torrent  of  liquor  and  of  lust. 
The  voice  of  the  critics  of  missions  is  not  raised  against 
this.  Men  who  are  indignant  at  the  religious  propa- 
gandism  of  the  missions  of  the  Church  have  no  word 
of  loathing  and  detestation  for  the  missions  of  hell 
and  death.  Mr.  Hiram  Maxim  sneeringly  declares 
that  Christianity  is  violating  the  Golden  Rule  in  carry- 
ing into  China  an  unpopular  religion ;  but  he  does  not 
allude  to  the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  Chinese  wel- 
comed death  when  it  was  dealt  out  to  them  by  the 
Japanese  from  the  venomous  mouths  of  Mr.  Maxim's 
guns.  Is  a  trade  in  Maxim  guns  consistent  with  the 
Golden  Rule  ?  The  French  government  recently  opened 
a  hospital  in  a  certain  Chinese  port  and  invited  lead- 
ing Chinese  residents  to  an  introductory  feast.  In 
addition  to  the  feast  each  guest  found  standing  behind 
his  chair  a  Chinese  girl  provided  for  him  from  the 
neighbouring  brothels.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  a  fair  ques- 
tion to  ask :  Is  this  the  plane  on  which  these  critics 
think  the  East  and  the  West  should  hold  their  inter- 
course ? 

Surely,  even  a  man  who  has  never  come  to  the  ful- 
ness of  himself  in  a  realization  of  God's  life  for  him 
can  yet  rise  above  the  idea  of  a  world  bound  by  gold 
chains,  not  to  the  feet  of  God,  but  to  the  counter,  the 
bank  and  the  vault.  Nations  of  men  should  find  con- 
tact on  the  plane  of  what  is  best  in  them,  and,  waiving 
the  supreme  claims  of  Christianity,  w^e  are  surely  not 
yet  so  sunk  though,  "  we're  sunk  enough  here,  God 
knows,"  that  we  can  be  sucked  down  into  an  inter- 
course with  Asia  that  leaves  out  the  very  secret  and 
crown  of  our  life. 


Assumption  Underlying  Missionary  Criticism  91 

And  in  such  contact  as  this — contact  on  the  highest 
plane  alone — can  the  interests  which  the  money  seeker 
and  the  politician  are  in  quest  of  be  secured.  When 
Mr.  James  Bryce  came  back  from  his  recent  trip  to 
India,  he  frankly  declared  that  his  journey  had  at  least 
convinced  him  of  this,  that  unless  England  could  suc- 
ceed in  Christianizing  its  Indian  subjects,  the  Empire 
could  not  last,  that  nothing  else  could  hold  it  together ; 
that  at  present  there  were  two  sets  of  lives,  two  civili- 
zations, two  races  in  juxtaposition;  that  there  could  be 
no  real  interfusion  and  no  possibiUty  of  mutual  under- 
standing except  on  the  religious  side;  that  unless  we 
try  to  understand  men  as  religious  beings,  we  do  not 
reach  them  on  any  other  side.  Viscount  Cranborne, 
Lord  Salisbury's  eldest  son,  recently  said  the  same 
things  more  frankly  still. 

The  critic  of  missions  must  in  some  way  dispose  of 
the  indestructible  genius  of  Christian  history.  He 
must  contrive  to  escape  also  from  evidence  against 
which  his  cavil  cannot  stand  in  any  court  in  Chris- 
tendom. 


MISSIONS  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

DR.  OTTO  ZOCKLER  has  remarked  that  "  it 
arises  from  one  and  the  same  divine  arrange- 
ment that  the  foundation  for  the  mightiest 
triumphs  of  the  human  mind  over  the  forces 
of  nature  was  laid  at  the  same  time  with  the  beginning 
of  an  earnest  and  energetic  effort  of  Protestant  Chris- 
tendom to  fulfil  its  missionary  vocation."  The  mind 
that  is  open  to  the  expansive  purposes  of  God  is  alert 
also  to  catch  new  truth  in  every  sphere.  The  mission- 
ary spirit  is  full  of  mtellectual  stimulus. 

But  there  is  an  even  closer  relation  between  a  true 
missionary  interest  and  the  spiritual  life.  The  spirit- 
ual life  is  simply  the  reign  of  the  spirit  of  Christ 
within.  And  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  not  a  narrow  or 
selfish  or  provincial  spirit.  The  spirit  of  Christ  in  us 
cannot  be  different  from  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  Him. 
He  loved  the  world.  He  came  to  save  the  world.  In 
Him  God  was  reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself. 
His  spirit  did  not  realize  itself  in  any  inner  develop- 
ment. Its  goal  was  not  fellowship  with  the  Father. 
It  reached  out  toward  the  needy  and  it  led  Him  to  die 
for  the  sinful  as  He  strove  to  seek  and  to  save  the  lost. 
And  so  in  us  the  spirit  of  Christ  would  be  what  it  was 
in  Christ,  the  spirit  of  outreaching  service,  of  sym- 
pathy as  broad  as  the  needs  of  the  human  heart  and 
the  woes  of  the  human  race.  And  there  is  something 
suspicious  and  deceptive  about  our  spiritual  life  if  it  is 
able  to  tolerate  easily  a  feeling  of  indifference  toward 
those  outer  nations  which  Christ  reached  with  His 
love  but  which  we  leave  beyond  the  reach  of  His  mes- 
sage. 

92 


Missions  and  Spiritual  Life  93 

To  have  a  true  spiritual  life,  therefore,  is  to  be  in 
sympathy  with  missions.  And  conversely,  interest  in 
missions  feeds  the  deeper  life.  Obedience  begets  love, 
even  as  it  evidences  it.  To  have  in  mind  the  last  com- 
mand of  Jesus,  and  to  strive  to  be  obedient  thereto, 
keeps  Jesus  the  Commander  constantly  before  the 
mind  and  in  the  heart,  and  the  memory  of  Jesus  is  a 
transforming  power.  It  is  impossible  to  be  recalling 
every  day  His  words,  "  Go,  preach,"  "  Unto  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth,"  without  recalling  Him  to  us 
as  He  stood  among  His  disciples  in  Galilee,  or  as  the 
clouds  of  heaven  rolled  down  to  welcome  and  en- 
shroud Him  on  Olivet.  And  so  we  see  Jesus.  If  any 
man  wants,  like  the  Greeks,  to  see  Him  who  has  not 
seen  Him  as  clear  and  sweet  as  he  desires,  here  is  the 
secret  he  has  been  waiting  for.  Obey,  and  the  effort 
to  obey  will  make  His  love  a  new  power  and  His  pres- 
ence a  new  joy. 

Jesus  Himself  associated  these  things :  "  Go  ye  and 
make  disciples  of  all  nations,  and  lo !  I  am  with  you 
alway,"  and  "  Ye  shall  receive  power,  after  that  the 
Holy  Ghost  is  come  upon  you :  and  ye  shall  be  wit- 
nesses unto  Me  unto  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth." 

The  missionary  spirit  leads  a  man  to  think  of  the 
far  distant  people  as  though  they  were  near.  It  makes 
him  desire  to  subordinate  all  his  own  interests  to  them. 
He  longs  after  those  for  whom  Jesus  died.  He  counts 
the  world's  ambitions  cheap  and  tawdry  in  comparison 
with  Paul's  ambition  to  preach  the  gospel  where 
Christ  has  not  been  named.  He  sympathizes  with  hu- 
man suffering.  He  wishes  to  do  and  suffer  himself  for 
those  who  will  never  repay  him  and  many  of  whom  he 
will  never  see  until  he  sees  them  at  the  Judgment.  This 
is  "  losing  a  man's  Hfe."  And  this  is  "  finding  it 
again."     The  heart  expands.     The  spirit  grows  sweet. 


94         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

The  love  of  God  passing  knowledge,  and  the  peace  of 
God  passing  understanding  come  to  this  man. 

And  all  this  is  not  theory.  In  fact,  thousands  of 
men  and  women  can  testify  to  the  new  spiritual  life 
and  joy  that  have  come  through  this  realization  of 
those  responsibihties  to  spread  the  gospel  over  tlie 
whole  world  which  are  inherent  in  Christian  disciple- 
ship.  Revivals  of  missionary  devotion  and  of  spiritual 
life  have  ever  gone  hand  in  hand.  The  great  student 
movement  in  Great  Britain  which  led  Professor  Drum- 
mond  into  the  work  for  students  at  Edinburgh,  and 
which  exerted  the  profoundest  influence  at  Cambridge, 
Glasgow,  Edinburgh,  St.  Andrews,  and  Aberdeen, 
sprang  from  the  consecration  to  missions  of  Stanley 
Smith  and  C.  T.  Studd,  and  the  flaming  zeal  and 
spiritual  powers  which  were  in  great  measure  the 
fruits  of  that  consecration.  The  Rev.  F.  B.  Meyer, 
who  has  been  a  blessing  to  thousands  since,  has  testified 
that  to  the  influence  of  these  two  young  men  he  owes 
"his  entrance  into  the  life  of  peace  and  power. 

"  He  that  hath  My  commandments  and  keepeth 
them,  he  it  is  that  loveth  Me;  and  he  that  loveth  Me 
shall  be  loved  of  My  Father,  and  I  will  love  him  and 
will  manifest  Myself  unto  him."  Keeping  His  com- 
mandments,— that  is  missions.  The  Father's  love  and 
the  manifested  Christ, — that  is  the  deepest  of  all  deep 
life.  What  Jesus  has  thus  joined  inseparably  together 
men  will  try  in  vain  to  keep  asunder.  Let  us  be  wise  to 
discern  this  and  enter  through  the  door  Jesus  has  ap- 
pointed into  Life. 


XI 


MISSIONARIES  AND  THEIR  RIGHTS 

A  STATE  has  certain  duties  toward  its  citizens. 
Looked  at  from  the  side  of  the  citizen,  these 
duties  of  the  State  are  his  rights.  He  may  be 
a  simple  child,  too  ignorant  to  know  his  rights 
or  unable  to  claim  them,  but  the  State  has  its  duties  to 
discharge  to  him,  none  the  less,  and  he  accordingly  has 
his  rights.  What  these  rights  are  which  the  citizens  of 
the  State  possess  is  one  question.  What  each  citizen 
will  do  with  his  rights  is  a  different  question. 

As  a  citizen  the  missionary  has,  in  general,  exactly 
the  same  rights  as  other  citizens.  The  fact  that  he 
goes  abroad,  not  to  make  money  but  to  do  good,  does 
not  deprive  him  of  rights  recognized  in  the  case  of  men 
who  go  abroad  to  make  money,  and  who  often  make  it 
through  doing  evil.  Whether  in  any  particular  for- 
eign land  the  missionary's  rights  are  greater  or  less 
than  the  trader's,  depends  on  the  treaty  stipulations  be- 
tween that  land  and  his.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  the  missionary's  work  which  abrogates  in 
his  case  rights  acknowledged  to  the  merchant  or  the 
traveller. 

It  has  been  alleged  in  the  case  of  the  China  mis- 
sionaries that  the  claim  that  they  "  only  ask  the  pro- 
tection that  every  dweller  in  a  foreign  land  is  entitled 
to  from  his  government  is  specious,  because  mission- 
aries do  not  behave  as  ordinary  residents.  In  China, 
at  all  events,  they  appear  as  conspirators  against  Chi- 
nese society  and  the  Chinese  State."  That  is  not  true; 
but  even  if  it  were,  the  question  is  closed  by  the  simple 
fact  that  the  treaties  plainly  declare  that  the  mission- 
aries and  their  converts  "  shall  alike  be  entitled  to  the 

95 


^6         Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

protection  of  the  Chinese  authorities."  '  As  the  United 
States  Treaty  declares,  "  Any  person,  whether  citizen 
of  the  United  States  or  Chinese  convert,  who,  accord- 
ing to  these  tenets  (i.e.,  the  principles  of  the  Christian 
religion  as  professed  by  the  Protestant  and  Roman 
CathoHc  Churches),  peaceably  teach  and  practice  the 
principles  of  Christianity,  shall  in  no  case  be  interfered 
with  or  molested."  It  is  said  that  William  B.  Reed, 
the  framer  of  this  treaty,  stated  that  this  "  matter  was 
brought  forward  and  encouraged  by  the  Chinese  them- 
selves." Neither  Mr.  Reed  nor  any  of  the  other  minis- 
ters then  negotiating  treaties  with  China  had  author- 
ity to  insist  upon  this  recognition  of  Christianity,  "  and 
if  the  representatives  of  the  Chinese  government  had 
not  urged  it,  there  is  no  probability  that  such  clauses 
would  have  been  inserted."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
right  of  trade  was  insisted  upon  by  the  Western 
Powers,  and  was  extorted  from  the  Chinese  whether 
they  would  or  not.  The  rights  of  missionaries  to 
preach  in  China  and  to  claim  protection  for  themselves 
and  their  converts,  are  guaranteed  by  unmistakable 
treaty  provisions.  And  there  is  no  evidence  that  the 
Chinese  did  not  willingly  accede  to  these  provisions. 

In  speaking  of  the  ground  of  the  intervention  of  the 
United  States  at  the  time  of  the  riots  of  1895,  the  Hon. 
John  W.-  Foster,  who  has  as  much  right  as  any  man 
to  speak  alike  for  the  government  of  the  United  States 
and  for  the  government  of  China,  said  :  "  There  seems 
to  be  in  a  part  of  the  public  press  of  our  country  a  mis- 
conception of  the  ground  upon  which  our  government 
bases  its  intervention  on  account  of  these  riots.  It  is 
not  because  we  are  a  Christian  country  and  are  seek- 
ing to  support  a  Christian  propagandism  in  China.  It 
is  simply  because  the  people  in  whose  behalf  our  gov- 
ernment intervenes  are  American  citizens,  pursuing  a 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  97 

vocation  guaranteed  by  treaty  and  permitted  by  Chi- 
nese law.  It  should  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
Imperial  government  has  repeatedly  recognized  the 
salutary  influence  of  Christian  missions  in  their  moral 
tendencies,  their  educational  and  medical  work,  and 
their  charities.  The  American  missionary  has  the 
same  right  to  go  into  all  parts  of  the  Chinese  Empire 
and  preach  and  teach  in  the  name  of  his  Maker  as  the 
American  merchant  has  to  carry  on  his  trade  with 
South  America  or  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  and  he 
has  the  same  right  to  invoke  the  protection  of  his 
government  when  his  lawful  vocation  is  unduly  ob- 
structed or  his  life  or  property  put  in  peril." 

This  states  the  case  clearly.  The  missionary  has 
rights  as  clear  and  solid  as  those  of  the  trader.  But  it 
is  nevertheless  true  that  there  exists  a  feeling  in  some 
minds  that  the  missionary  ought  not  to  have  these 
rights,  and  that  therefore  it  is  proper  to  deny  that  he 
has  them.  It  seems  to  such  minds  anomalous  that  a 
man  who  goes  abroad  for  an  unselfish  purpose  should 
be  recognized  as  having  any  civil  or  political  rights. 
'And  often  governments  begrudge  any  recognition  of 
them.  They  do  not  object  to  any  expense  in  enforcing 
rights  of  traders,  or  recently  naturalized  aliens.  Wit- 
ness the  recent  case  of  Marcos  Essagin.  But  mission- 
aries are  different.  "  I  must  not  conceal  from  you," 
said  Lord  Salisbury,  and  it  was  a  discreditable  though 
unnecessary  revelation,  "  that  at  the  Foreign  Ofiice 
missionaries  are  not  popular."  There  have  been  times 
when  the  same  thing  could  be  said  of  our  State  Depart- 
ment. 

Why  are  they  not  popular  ?  Not  because  they  make 
a  disproportionate  amount  of  trouble ;  for  they  do  not. 
Not  because  they  lead  dissolute  or  criminal  lives ;  for 
they  do  not.    Missionaries  do  not  organize  Jameson 


98  Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

raids,  or  wound  natives  as  Essagin  did  in  Tangier,  or 
kill  them  as  Logan  did  at  Canton.  No,  there  is  a  feel- 
ing that  government  has  no  responsibility  toward  mis- 
sions, and  that  missionaries  are  bothersome  when  they 
obtrude  their  rights. 

There  is  something  in  this  undeniable  feeling  which 
Lord  Salisbury  so  openly  acknowledges  that  stirs  one's 
blood.  We  have  traders'  rights  which  governments 
are  glad  to  recognize  and  enforce,  while  the  Christian 
teacher  or  doctor,  working  unselfishly  for  the  good 
of  the  people  to  whom  he  goes,  is  a  nuisance  if  he 
needs  and  accepts  protection.  But  his  rights  are  just 
as  sacred  as  the  trader's,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  assure  them.  For  a  Prime  Minister,  head 
of  the  Foreign  Office,  to  say  that  his  office  dislikes  mis- 
sionaries is  to  indicate  the  unworthiness  of  his  office 
and  of  his  subordinates.  Did  he  ever  say  that  the  men 
who  deal  in  opium  with  China,  or  who  have  dealt  in 
rum  and  fire-arms  with  Africa  and  the  South  Sea 
Islands  were  unpopular  in  the  Foreign  Office? 

But  beyond  this  it  may  be  said  that  there  have  been 
times  in  the  history  of  the  British  Foreign  Office  when* 
a  nobler  sense  of  national  duty  prevailed,  when  minis- 
ters recognized  obligations  to  mankind,  beside  which 
Lord  Salisbury's  unpleasant  humour  seems  a  squalid 
thing.  After  the  public  execution  at  Adrianople,  in 
1853,  of  a  young  Moslem  judicially  condemned  to 
death  for  the  crime  of  having  apostatized  to  Christian- 
ity, the  Earl  of  Clarendon,  Minister  of  Foreign  Af- 
fairs, wrote  to  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  the  British 
Ambassador  at  Constantinople :  "  The  Christian 
Powers,  who  are  making  gigantic  efforts  and  sub- 
mitting to  enormous  sacrifices  to  save  the  Turkish  Em- 
pire from  ruin  and  destruction,  cannot  permit  the  con- 
tinuance of  a  law  in  Turkey  which  is  not  only  a  stand- 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  99 

ing  insult  to  them,  but  a  source  of  cruel  persecution  to 
their  co-religionists,  which  they  never  can  consent  to 
perpetuate  by  the  successes  of  their  fleets  and  armies. 
They  are  entitled  to  demand,  and  Her  Majesty's  gov- 
ernment do  distinctly  demand,  that  no  pimishment 
whatever  shall  attach  to  the  Mohammedan  who  becomes 
a  Christian."  The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  had  the  same 
noble  conception  of  the  duty  of  a  Christian  nation 
when,  in  1844,  he  wrote  to  Sir  Stratford  Canning: 
"  The  Christian  Powers  will  not  endure  that  the  Porte 
should  insult  and  trample  on  their  faith,  by  treating  as 
a  criminal  any  person  who  embraces  it."  Taking  this 
highest  view  of  national  duty,  it  may  be  maintained 
that  governments  exist  more  for  the  extension  of 
truth  and  justice  than  for  the  extension  of  trade,  and 
that  those  representatives  who  go  out  to  teach  men 
better  ways  and  to  lift  up  their  life  have  more  right 
to  be  defended  than  those  who  go  for  commerce,  and 
far  more,  surely,  than  those  who  carry  on  debasing 
traffics,  or  who  lead  polluted  lives.  I  am  not  origi- 
nating this  distinction.  I  have  held  that  the  State 
has  duties  toward  all.  But  when  men  draw  lines,  and 
deny  to  missionaries  rights  which  they  claim  for 
others,  I  believe  it  is  just  to  reply  that  if  distinctions 
are  to  be  drawn,  all  the  claims  for  excess  of  rights  are 
on  the  side  of  the  missionaries. 

Let  that  pass ;  but  let  us  have  done  with  the  non- 
sense that  the  State  owes  the  duty  of  securing  treaty 
rights  and  protection  of  person  to  some  of  its  citizens, 
but  not  to  others.  The  London  Spectator  stated  the 
case  clearly  some  years  ago,  when  this  same  question 
was  under  discussion : 

"  It  must  next  be  asked  whether  when  the  mission- 
aries go  to  China  they  ought  to  be  as  fully  protected  as 
other  citizens  doing  their  lawful  business.     Tt  might. 


lOO       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

perhaps,  be  arguable  that  missionaries  in  China  could 
not  claim  the  protection  of  England,  supposing  they 
were  breaking  the  law  of  the  land  by  teaching  Chris- 
tianity. Personally,  we  hold  that  there  is  a  good  deal 
to  be  said  for  the  opinion  that  they  should  be  pro- 
tected even  in  that  case,  or,  in  other  words,  that  no 
Christian  State  should  recognize  the  right  of  a  semi- 
civilized  Power  to  exclude  the  entry  of  Christianity. 

"  It  is  not,  however,  in  the  present  case  necessary 
to  discuss  this  problem.  The  legal  right  of  the  mis- 
sionaries to  live  in  China  and  to  teach  Christianity  is 
absolutely  clear,  and  is  guaranteed  by  treaty.  The 
men  and  women  who  were  burned  and  speared  the 
other  day  had  done  nothing  contrary  to  the  law,  or 
for  which  they  could  have  been  lawfully  punished 
by  any  Chinese  tribunal.  This  being  the  case,  we  hold 
it  to  be  mischievous  nonsense  to  talk  as  if  the  Chinese 
missions  did  not  deserve  protection.  Are  men  and 
women  to  lose  their  British  citizenship  because,  in 
obedience  to  the  voice  of  duty,  and  in  order  to  carry 
out  what  they  believe  to  be  the  will  of  God,  they  de- 
vote their  lives  to  rescuing  human  beings  from  that 
appalling  mixture  of  materialism  and  superstition 
which  in  China  passes  for  religion  ?  Is  a  man  to  have 
the  English  shield  over  him  only  as  long  as  he  buys 
tea  and  sells  cotton ;  and  is  the  teaching  of,  and  minis- 
tering to,  the  degraded  people  of  Southern  China  to  be 
held  as  depriving  an  Englishman  of  his  claim  to  be 
unmolested  in  a  foreign  country  as  long  as  he  con- 
ducts himself  in  accordance  with  the  law? 

"  If  this  were  to  be  the  rule,  the  consequence  might, 
indeed,  be  curious.  We  should  have  questions  asked 
in  Parliament  as  to  why  nothing  had  been  done  in 
regard  to  the  flaying  alive  of  Mr.  Brown,  a  Scotch 
tea-broker,  answered  by  the  remark :    *  It  appears  that 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  loi 

Air.  Brown  had  been  in  the  habit  of  teaching  in  the 
Sunday-school  of  a  Presbyterian  mission  near  the  place 
where  he  was  killed,  and  therefore  the  British  gov- 
ernment could  not  be  expected  to  interfere.'  The 
truth  is,  the  attempt  to  say  that  the  government  ought 
not  to  bother  about  missionaries  is  absurd.  Unless  we 
are  going  to  give  up  the  idea  that  British  citizenship 
is  a  full  protection  to  all  to  whom  it  attaches,  we  must 
protect  men  whether  they  preach  or  teach,  or  only  buy 
and  sell." 

But,  as  I  said  at  the  outset,  what  rights  the  mission- 
ary has,  is  one  thing :  what  he  will  do  with  his  rights, 
is  a  different  thing.  The  second  question  is  not  one 
for  discussion  by  those  who  deny  him  his  just  rights. 
It  is  a  family  question  which  missionaries  and  those 
who  sympathize  with  them  may  discuss  among  them- 
selves. It  does  not  at  all  affect  the  duty  of  the  State. 
It  merely  affects  the  claims  that  the  missionary  will 
make  and  his  attitude  before  the  world. 

The  missionary  is  at  liberty  to  refrain  from  exer- 
cising his  rights  when  he  thinks  he  ought  to  do  so. 
To  be  sure,  the  State  is  at  liberty  to  refuse  to  allow 
him  to  surrender  his  rights.  Consuls  have  obliged 
missionaries  to  accept  protection  more  than  once  when 
they  did  not  seek  it.  But  the  missionary  can  refrain 
from  claiming  what  he  has  a  right  to  claim.  As 
Woolsey  says  in  his  Political  Science:  "  Rights  may 
be  waived.  The  very  nature  of  a  right  implies  that 
the  subject  of  it  decides  whether  he  shall  exercise 
it  or  not,  in  a  particular  case.  ...  It  can  never 
be  too  often  repeated  in  this  age  that  duty  is  higher 
than  freedom,  that  when  a  man  has  a  power  or  pre- 
rogative the  first  question  for  him  to  ask  is :  '  How 
and  in  what  spirit  is  it  my  duty  to  use  my  power  or 
prerogative?    What  law  shall  I  lay  down  for  myself. 


I02       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

so  that  my  power  shall  not  be  a  source  of  evil  to  me 
and  to  others  ?  " 

In  a  real  sense,  the  whole  missionary  movement  is 
a  surrender  of  rights.  The  Incarnation  was  just  this. 
Our  Lord  emptied  Himself,  counting  not  His  right  to 
be  equal  with  God  as  a  thing  to  be  jealously  retained. 
Every  missionary  gives  up  many  rights  in  order  to  go 
to  the  mission  field,  and  there  his  whole  life  is  in  a 
real  sense  a  self-emptying  and  an  abandonment  of 
things  he  might  have  claimed.  To  what  extent  is 
this  spirit  to  govern  his  relations  to  his  own  govern- 
ment and  to  the  government  of  China  for  example? 

There  are  some  earnest  missionaries  who  believe, 
as  one  of  them  says,  that  "  every  missionary  in  China 
should  resolve  that  henceforth  under  no  circum- 
stances will  he  appeal  to  any  earthly  government.  He 
teaches  men  everywhere  to  be  subject  to  the  powers 
that  be.  He  prays  always  for  kings  and  for  all  in  au- 
thority. Pjut  he  will  bring  before  them  no  request  for 
protection  or  aid.  If  his  persecutions  are  not  too 
great,  he  will  bear  them.  If  they  threaten  too  much, 
he  w^ill  flee.  If  his  property  is  destroyed,  he  will  take 
joyfully  the  spoiling  of  his  goods  in  view  of  his 
heavenly  treasure,  and  no  representation  of  the  case 
shall  be  made  to  Minister  or  Consul.  If  he  is  killed, 
his  comrades  will  bury  him,  as  '  devout  men  carried 
Stephen  to  his  burial,'  and  they  will  do  no  more." 
This  was  to  be  the  principle  also  of  the  Soudan  mis- 
sion, which  Wilmot  Brooke  projected  :  "  As  the  mis- 
sionaries enter  the  Moslem  States  under  the  necessity 
of  violating  the  law  of  Islam,  which  forbids  anyone  to 
endeavour  to  turn  Moslems  to  Christ,  they  could  not, 
under  any  circumstances,  ask  for  British  intervention 
to  extricate  them  from  the  dangers  which  they  thus 
call  down  upon  themselves.     But  also  for  the  sake  of 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  103 

the  natives,  who  have  to  be  urged  to  brave  the  wrath 
of  man  for  Christ's  sake,  it  is  necessary  that  the  mis- 
sionaries should  themselves  take  the  lead  in  facing 
these  dangers,  and  should  in  every  possible  way  make 
it  clear  to  all  that  they  do  not  desire  to  shelter  them- 
selves, as  British  subjects,  from  the  liabilities  and 
perils  which  would  attach  to  Christian  converts  from 
Mohammedanism  in  the  Soudan.  They  will  there- 
fore voluntarily  lay  aside  all  claim  to  protection  as 
British  subjects,  and  place  themselves,  while  outside 
British  territory,  under  the  authority  of  the  native 
rulers." 

This  view  ignores  the  fact  that  States  have  duties, 
and  that  even  if  a  missionary  thinks  that  he  should  not 
strive  to  prevent  a  bad  government  from  doing  wrong 
and  injustice  when  it  has  bound  itself  solemnly,  as  in 
the  case  of  China,  to  avoid  such  wrong  and  injustice, 
the  State  whose  citizen  he  is  must  prevent  such  an 
evasion  of  solemn  obligation  and  such  offence  against 
rights.  And  further,  this  view  surrenders  too  com- 
pletely to  a  vicious  theory  of  the  State.  Is  civil  gov- 
ernment ordained  of  God  ?  If  it  is,  what  higher  func- 
tion can  it  have  than  to  defend  the  innocent  and  guar- 
antee justice?  States  as  well  as  families  and  churches, 
are  religious,  and  they  have  moral  as  well  as  commercial 
duties.  It  is  not  their  business  to  coerce  opinion.  It 
is  their  business  to  prevent  injustice.  They  may  not 
undertake  a  religious  propaganda,  but  neither  may 
they  permit  a  propaganda  of  assassination.  And  this 
view  makes  an  indefensible  distinction.  If  Christian 
citizens  may  exercise  their  political  rights  at  home, 
they  may  do  so  abroad. 

Furthermore,  such  a  view  assumes  what  needs  to 
be  proved,  and  what  cannot  be  proved  from  history; 
namely,  that  religion  must  be  wholly  divorced  from 


I04       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

politics.  Every  State  must  be  religious.  And  every 
religion  must  deal  with  the  organized  life  of  man, 
which  is  politics.  The  two  can  be  confused  to  the  in- 
jury of  each,  and  they  can  be  separated  equally  to 
their  mutual  injury.  But  they  have  undeniable  points 
of  contact.  As  Dr.  Nevius,  one  of  the  most  sagacious 
missionaries  to  China,  has  said  in  a  posthumous  paper, 
on  this  subject  of  missionaries'  rights: 

"  The  adoption  of  any  fixed,  unvarying  rule  of  pro- 
cedure would  be  sure  to  mislead  us.  Some  of  the 
teachings  of  the  Bible  seem  to  present  the  duty  of  ab- 
solute non-resistance,  abstaining  from  appeals  to  the 
civil  power  for  protection  under  all  circumstances.  In 
other  places  we  are  taught  that  resistance  to  persecu- 
tion and  an  appeal  to  the  civil  power  for  protec- 
tion are  legitimate  and  under  some  circumstances 
obligatory. 

"  The  example  of  the  Apostle  Paul  on  his  first  visit  to 
Philippi  is  remarkably  apropos  here.  While  he  joy- 
fully submitted  to  being  seized,  scourged,  and  thrust 
into  the  inner  prison,  when  all  might  have  been 
avoided  by  a  word,  we  cannot  (to  use  the  language 
of  Dr.  Alexander)  but  admire  the  moral  courage,  calm 
decision,  and  sound  judgment  which  he  showed  in  the 
assertion  of  his  legal  rights,  precisely  when  it  was 
most  likely  to  be  useful  to  himself  and  others.  This  is 
enough  to  show  how  far  he  was  from  putting  a  fa- 
natical or  rigorous  interpretation  on  our  Saviour's 
principle  of  non-resistance  (Alatt.  v:  39;  Luke  vi :  29) 
which,  like  many  other  precepts  in  the  same  discourse, 
teaches  what  we  should  be  willing  to  endure  in  an  ex- 
treme case,  but  without  abolishing  our  right  and  duty 
to  determine  when  that  case  occurs.  Thus  Paul 
obeyed  it,  both  in  letter  and  spirit,  by  submitting  to 
maltreatment  and  by  afterwards  resenting  it,  as  either 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  105 

of  these  courses  seemed  most  likely  to  do  good  to  men 
and  honour  to  God." 

The  missionary  has  his  rights,  and  there  are  times 
when  he  may  justly  claim  them,  when  it  would  be 
wrong  for  him  to  waive  them  and  obtusely  permit 
injustice  and  crime.  Even  if  some  evil  is  caused  by 
his  acceptance  of  his  rights,  it  is  less  than  would  be 
caused  if  he  waived  them.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  times  when  he  must  surrender  them  in  the  in- 
terest of  his  mission.  The  right  principle  is  that  he 
should  lay  aside  all  selfishness,  all  desire  for  mere 
personal  protection,  and  all  "  motives  of  a  purely  per- 
sonal character  "  and  do  what  will  be  best  for  Christ's 
Church.  If  the  interests  of  Christ's  Church  will  be 
best  served  by  the  missionary's  death,  he  must  die; 
if  by  his  life,  he  must  live.  He  has  no  right  to  sur- 
render the  interests  of  the  Church  to  the  claims  of 
some  rigid  theory  of  his  own,  especially  if  it  rests  on 
an  atheistic  and  immoral  view  of  the  functions  of 
civil  government. 

The  Principles  and  Practice  of  the  missionary 
society  which  has  the  largest  number  of  missionaries 
in  China,  sets  forth  a  view  with  which,  theoretically 
at  least,  I  think  the  great  majority  of  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries agree,  and  which  I  am  quite  sure  de- 
fines their  actual  practice.  A  small  minority  of  mis- 
sionaries have  ever  made  any  representation  of  any 
sort  to  either  Consuls  or  Chinese  officials.  "  Too 
great  caution,"  the  Principles  and  Practice  of  the 
China  Inland  Mission  declares,  "  cannot  be  exercised 
by  all  missionaries  residing  or  journeying  inland,  to 
avoid  difficulties  and  complications  with  the  people, 
and  especially  with  the  authorities.  Every  member 
of  the  mission  must  understand  that  he  goes  out  de- 
pending for  help  and  protection  on  the  living  God 


io6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  not  relying  on  an  arm  of  flesh.  .  .  .  Ap- 
peals to  Consuls  or  to  Chinese  officials  to  procure  the 
punishment  of  offenders,  or  to  demand  the  vindica- 
tion of  real  or  supposed  rights,  or  for  indemnification 
for  losses,  are  to  be  avoided.  Should  trouble  or  per- 
secution arise  inland,  a  friendly  representation  may  be 
made  to  the  local  Chinese  officials.  .  .  .  Under 
no  circumstances  may  any  missionary  on  his  own  re- 
sponsibility make  any  written  appeal  to  the  British 
or  other  foreign  authorities.  ...  In  preaching 
and  selling  books  the  collection  of  large  crowds  in 
busy  thoroughfares  should,  as  far  as  possible,  be 
avoided,  and,  where  it  can  be  done,  any  difficulty 
should  be  arranged  without  reference  to  the  local  au- 
thorities. .  .  .  On  no  account  should  threatening  lan- 
guage be  used  or  the  threat  of  appealing  to  the  Consul 
be  made.  Great  respect  must  be  shown  to  all  in  au- 
thority, and  must  also  be  manifested  in  speaking  of 
them,  as  is  required  by  the  Word  of  God.  Where 
prolonged  stay  in  a  city  is  likely  to  cause  trouble,  it 
is  better  to  journey  onward;  and  where  residence  can- 
not be  peaceably  and  safely  effected,  to  retire  and  give 
up  or  defer  the  attempt,  in  accordance  with  the 
Master's  injunction,  '  When  they  persecute  )'OU  in 
this  city,  flee  ye  into  another.'  God  will  open  more 
doors  than  we  can  enter  and  occupy.  In  conclusion, 
the  weapons  of  our  warfare  must  be  practically  re- 
cognized as  spiritual,  and  not  carnal." 

I  think  the  Eev.  John  Ross,  of  IManchuria.  one  of 
the  leading  missionaries  to  the  Chinese,  expresses  the 
common  judgment  when  he  says :  "  It  is  dangerous 
for  us  to  demand  always  what  we  call  '  treaty  rights ' 
— rights  under  treaties  extorted  from  China.  Better 
to  quietly  endure  many  a  wrong  than  assist  by  ever 
claiming  our  '  rights  '  to  deepen  the  sense  of  irritation 


Missionaries  and  Their  Rights  107 

given  by  our  presence  in  China.  Where  and  when 
this  endurance  should  end  must  be  left  to  individual 
conscience." 

l\Ir.  Conger  has  consulted  the  desires  of  the  mis- 
sionaries in  China  on  this  general  question  of  their 
political  rights,  especially  in  relation  to  the  lawsuits 
of  Chinese,  and  on  January  24th,  1900,  he  wrote  to 
Mr.  Hay,  regarding  the  proposal  that  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries should  claim  the  political  privileges  accorded 
to  the  Roman  Catholics,  that  he  had  consulted  "  the 
Protestant  missionaries  of  all  denominations,  and  at 
least  nine-tenths  of  them,  speaking  from  their  own 
experience  at  treaty  ports  and  in  the  interior,  living 
near  United  States  Consuls  and  far  from  them,  ex- 
pressed themselves  as  opposed  to  making  any  requests 
for  like  privileges,  or,  in  fact,  paying  any  attention 
whatever  to  the  decree.  The  gist  of  all  their  argu- 
ments was,  that  the  Chinese  were  continually  soliciting 
the  aid  of  missionaries  in  lawsuits  and  other  local 
difficulties,  requesting  them  to  intercede  with  Chinese 
officials,  etc.,  and  that,  if  the  rights  and  privileges  ac- 
corded to  the  Catholics  by  the  decree  were  by  public 
edict  given  to  them,  it  would  be  understood  by  the 
Chinese  as  a  special  authority  giving  the  missionaries 
license  and  power  to  interfere,  and  so  tend  to  make 
them  civil  advocates  instead  of  gospel  ministers.  This 
they  do  not  desire." 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  the  question  of 
the  relation  of  missionaries  to  the  trials  and  perse- 
cutions of  the  native  Christians.  Exactly  the  same 
principles  govern  there  that  govern  in  the  case  of  the 
missionary.  Rights  are  to  be  claimed  or  waived,  not 
as  the  personal  interest  of  the  individual  may  suggest 
but  as  the  interests  of  the  Church  require.  The  same 
treaty  stipulations  which  ensure  protection  to  the  mis- 


lo8        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sionary  in  China  cover  the  rights  of  the  native  Chris- 
tians to  freedom  from  molestation.  The  rights  and 
the  duties  of  missionaries  and  native  converts  in  this 
regard  are  the  same.  They  will  accept  or  avoid  suffer- 
ing, not  as  they  wish,  but  as  they  ought,  in  the  interests 
of  their  spiritual  enterprise. 

For  the  missionary  work  is  a  spiritual  work.  It 
has  spiritual  motives,  spiritual  aims,  spiritual  methods. 
And  while  it  is  carried  on  by  men  who  are  possessed 
of  civil  rights  which  they  have  no  right  to  treat  with 
contempt,  which  they  must  use  as  the  interests  of 
their  work  demand,  it  is  yet  one  right  of  these  men 
that  they  may  surrender  their  rights  when,  and  to  the 
extent,  that  it  is  to  the  interest  of  their  cause  that 
they  should  do  so.  When  that  may  be,  it  is  for  them 
to  determine  for  themselves ;  it  is  not  to  be  determined 
for  them  by  those  who  deny  that  the  missionaries  have 
any  rights  at  all. 


XII 

CHRISTIANITY  THE  SOLITARY  AND  SUFFICIENT 
RELIGION 

THE  missionary  enterprise  is  primarily  and  es- 
sentially the  propagation  of  a  religion.  But 
is  the  religion  worth  propagating,  or  can  the 
nations  get  along  quite  as  well  without  it,  and 
the  world  attain  its  full  development  by  means  of  its 
own  faiths?  The  study  of  comparative  religion  has 
raised  this  question  and  many  others  like  it.  In  the 
earlier  days  of  modern  missions  Christians  are  sup- 
posed to  have  despised  and  condemned  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions,  and  to  have  supported  the  missionary 
enterprise  on  the  supposition  that  there  was  no  ele- 
ment of  good  and  no  saving  power  in  them.  To-day 
we  are  called  to  take  up  a  quite  different  attitude. 
Some  say  that  all  religions  are  essentially  alike,  and 
that  when  once  the  external  and  local  elements  are 
subtracted,  the  fundamental  conception  is  the  same 
everywhere  and  of  the  same  power.  Others  say  that 
while  there  are  great  differences,  yet  the  attitude  of 
missions  and  missionaries  should  be  wholly  sympathetic 
and  appreciative  of  the  non-Christian  faiths,  and  that 
missionary  preaching  should  be  the  affirmation  of  the 
truths  held  in  common  by  all  religions  rather  than  the 
assertion  of  what  is  distinctive  in  Christianity. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  prejudice  on  both  sides  of 
this  discussion.  Let  us  attempt  to  lay  this  aside,  as  far 
as  is  possible  for  men  who  believe  unqualifiedly  in 
Christianity  on  grounds  of  reason  and  examination  as 
well  as  of  experience  and  history,  and  endeavour  to  get 

109 


no       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

at  the  real  facts.  A  Christian  man  may  be  tempted 
to  deal  summarily  with  the  whole  matter.  "  What  is 
the  use  of  reopening  a  closed  question?"  he  may  ask. 
"  All  the  non-Christian  religions,  except  Moham- 
medanism, were  here  when  Christ  came.  He  came  to 
the  best  of  them,  pronounced  it  inadequate,  and  de- 
nounced its  priests  as  hypocrites.  If  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions  are  sufficient,  why  did  He  come?  Above 
all,  why  did  He  die?  Calvary  closes  the  issue  of  com- 
parative religion.  If  Judaism  needed  Jesus  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago,  Hinduism  needs  Him  to-day  a 
thousand  times  more."  This  is  a  summary  way  of 
settling  the  question.  To  Christians  it  is  absolutely 
final  and  conclusive.  But  we  may  waive  this  view  now 
and  accept  the  challenge  to  compare  Christianity  with 
the  other  religions. 

I.  There  is  nothing  good  in  them  that  is  not  in  it. 
They  are  not  wholly  bad.  In  each  one  of  the  great  re- 
ligions some  vital  truth  is  emphasized :  the  sovereignty 
of  God  in  Mohammedanism,  the  divine  immanence  in 
Hinduism,  human  submission  and  gentleness  in  Bud- 
dhism, filial  piety  and  political  order  in  Confucianism, 
patriotism  in  Shintoism,  the  spirituality  of  nature  in 
Shamanism — these  are  great  and  valuable  truths,  but 
( I )  they  need  to  be  twisted  out  of  the  ethnic  religions 
with  charity  and  allowance.  Dr.  Jacob  Chamberlain 
tells  of  a  Brahman  who  asked  him  at  the  close  of  a 
lecture  in  Madras,  in  which  he  had  quoted  some  noble 
passages  from  the  Hindu  Scriptures,  "  Sir,  whence 
did  you  cull  all  these  beautiful  utterances?  I  never 
knew  that  our  Vedas  and  poets  contained  such  gems." 
"  He  knew  not,"  adds  Dr.  Chamberlain,  "  the  weeks  of 
patient  toil  required  in  searching  through  bushels  of 
rubbish  to  find  these  few  pearls."  And  (2)  these 
truths  are  held  in  distortion,   unbalanced   by  needed 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       1 1 1 

counter-truths.  The  Moslem  holds  the  doctrine  of 
divine  sovereignty  so  one-sidedly  that  he  gives  up  all 
hope  of  progress,  loses  all  sense  of  personal  responsi- 
biUty  for  the  change  of  evil  conditions,  and  answers 
every  appeal  for  energetic  effort  by  the  resigned  pro- 
test, "  It  is  the  will  of  God."  The  Hindu  holds  the 
doctrine  of  divine  immanence  in  so  loose  and  un- 
guarded a  form  that  it  becomes  a  cover  for  utter  anti- 
nomianism.  The  man  is  his  own  god.  The  horrible 
immorality  of  much  Hindu  worship  is  the  legitimate 
result  of  the  pantheistic  development  of  the  Hindu 
doctrine  of  immanent  deity.  The  Buddhists  teach  sub- 
mission without  its  needed  counter-checks,  and  listless- 
ness  and  Nirvana  even  now  brood  over  the  Buddhist 
peoples.  Confucianism  teaches  the  ethics  of  a  present 
life,  and  forgets  that  there  is  a  life  to  come.  Shinto- 
ism  exalts  loyalty  to  country  and  master,  and  goes  to 
the  extreme  of  subordinating  to  such  loyalty  the  moral 
law.  Shamanism  makes  every  bush  the  house  of  God, 
and  propitiates  Him  by  adorning  His  house  wdth  rags 
or  old  shoes.  The  religion  whose  God  is  not  above  its 
bushes  as  well  as  in  its  bushes  can  do  no  better.  (3) 
Christianity  alone  gathers  up  into  itself  all  the  truths 
of  all  religions.  Their  "  broken  lights  "  are  repaired 
and  fulfUled  in  it.  It  teaches  that  God  is  a  person,  and 
so  escapes  the  peril  of  Hinduism.  It  teaches  that  He 
is  a  Spirit,  and  so  escapes  the  danger  of  Islam.  It 
teaches  submission  and  activity,  present  duty  and 
future  destiny,  loyalty  to  man  only  as  grounded  in 
loyalty  to  God  and  truth.  In  the  balance  of  its  ethics, 
also  Christianity  stands  alone.  The  ethics  of  the  non- 
Christian  religions  are  as  defective  and  distorted  as 
their  theology.  They  lack  proportion ;  their  sanctions 
are  ineffective  or  unadaptive.  They  breed  a  distinctly 
abnormal  type  of  character.     Christianity  alone   fits 


112       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

into  the  life  of  man,  because  it  alone  fits  into  the  life 
of  God.    As  Professor  Fisher  says : 

"  Christianity  is  not  a  religion  which  has  defects  to 
be  repaired  by  borrowing  from  other  religions.  The 
ethnic  religions  are  not  to  be  denounced  as  if  they 
were  a  product  of  Satan.  St.  Paul  found  ethical  and 
religious  truth  in  heathen  poets  and  moralists.  Yet 
Christianity,  as  it  came  in  the  fulness  of  time,  is  itself 
the  fulness  of  divine  revelation.  It  is  the  complement 
of  the  other  religions.  It  supplies  what  they  lack. 
It  realizes  what  they  vaguely  aspire  after.  Christ  is 
the  unconscious  desire  of  all  nations.  He  reveals  the 
God  whom  they  are  feeling  after.  In  a  word,  Chris- 
tianity is  the  absolute  religion.  It  was  the  apostle  of 
liberal  Christianity  who  said  that  '  other  foundation 
can  no  man  lay  than  that  which  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus 
Christ.' " 

2.  There  is  in  Christianity  what  is  in  no  non-Chris- 
tian religion.  There  are  three  great  elements  in  re- 
ligion— dependence,  fellowship,  and  progress.  The 
non-Christian  religions  supply  the  first  of  these.  But 
even  in  this  they  err  in  weary  excess.  The  sense  of 
dependence  with  each  of  them  resolves  itself  into  fear. 
Their  devotees  invent  cruel  gods  and  live  in  terror  of 
malignant  spirits.  But  only  Christianity  supplies  the 
need  of  fellowship  and  of  progress.  Only  Christians 
call  God  "  Father,"  and  only  Christian  nations,  or  na- 
tions like  Japan,  which  have  gone  to  school  to  Chris- 
tians, build  patent  offices,  feel  forth  into  the  future, 
and  put  out  into  the  open  sea  trusting  God.  Chris- 
tianity presents  distinct  and  original  conceptions  of  sin, 
salvation,  and  the  future,  which  set  it  in  a  class  apart. 
Whoever  speaks  of  it  as  on  the  same  level  with  other 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion        113 

religions  and  not  essentially  different  from  them,  has 
never  compared  its  conceptions  and  theirs  on  these  vital 
questions.  If  any  one  wishes  to  do  this,  let  him  read 
Kellogg's  Handbook  of  Comparative  Religion.  The 
idea  of  personality,  human  and  divine,  v^hich  lies  at  the 
root  of  our  religion  is  lacking  elsewhere ;  while  great 
ideals,  for  example,  the  ideals  of  service,  purity,  hu- 
mility, santification,  the  home,  which  are  commonplace 
to  us,  are  foreign  to  the  heathen  world.  Above  all, 
only  Christians  possess  a  religion — not  of  a  book,  like 
Islam ;  a  method,  like  Buddhism ;  a  social  order,  like 
Hinduism ;  a  political  ethic,  like  Confucianism ;  but  of 
a  Person,  once  here  in  history,  yet  still  here  as  Saviour 
and  friend,  with  whom  we  are  mystically  joined,  while 
yet  He  is  still  Himself  and  we  are  still  ourselves.  In 
this  relationship  to  a  Person,  whose  name  it  bears, 
Christianity  sets  forth  its  supreme  characteristic,  and 
cleaves  an  impassable  chasm  between  itself  and  all 
other  religions. 

A  remarkable  testimony  to  the  unlikeness  of  Chris- 
tianity to  the  ethnic  religions  is  presented  in  their  lar- 
ceny of  Christian  doctrines  and  conceptions.  This  fact 
has  completely  altered  the  character  of  the  apologetic 
problem  before  Christianity  in  India  and  Japan.  At 
first  Christianity  met  Hinduism  and  Buddhism 
squarely,  but  they  soon  discovered  that  their  position 
was  indefensible,  and  at  once  began  to  shift  their 
ground.  To-day  they  present  the  old  forms  filled,  for 
defensive  purpose,  with  Christian  notions.  Vedantism 
is  not  so  much  a  return  to  the  Vedas  as  it  is  a  gospeliza- 
tion,  so  to  speak,  of  present  Hinduism.  The  Swamis 
come  to  America  and  entranced  audiences  hang  upon 
their  words  of  spiritual  suggestiveness  and  beauty, 
supposing  that  now  at  last  they  are  hearing  the  pure 
teaching   of   Hinduism    which    the   missionaries    have 


114       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

basely  slandered.  On  the  other  hand,  as  the  Indian 
Nation,  an  orthodox  Hindu  paper  has  said,  "  the  pure, 
undefiled  Hinduism  which  Swami  Vivakananda 
preached  has  no  existence  to-day,  has  had  no  existence 
for  centuries.  .  .  .  As  a  fact,  abomination  wor- 
ship is  the  main  ingredient  of  modern  Hinduism."  The 
Swami's  representation  is  simply  a  confession  of  the 
success  of  the  Christian  onslaught  upon  Hindu  cor- 
ruption and  a  borrowing  of  Christian  garments  to  hide 
its  shame.  As  Dr.  Barrows  said  temperately,  after  re- 
turning from  his  visit  to  Asia :  "  The  world  needs  the 
Christian  religion.  I  have  given  five  of  the  best  years 
of  my  life  to  the  examination  of  this  question,  and  I 
have  had  opportunities,  such  as  no  other  man  ever 
had,  of  seeing  and  knowing  the  best  side  of  the  ethnic 
religions.  I  count  as  my  friends  Parsees  and  Hindus, 
Buddhists  and  Confucianists,  Shintoists  and  Moham- 
medans. I  know  what  they  say  about  themselves.  I 
have  looked  at  their  religions  on  the  ideal  side,  as  well 
as  the  practical,  and  I  know  this :  that  the  very  best 
/'  which  is  in  them,  the  very  best  which  these  well-mean- 
ing men  have  shown  to  us,  is  a  reflex  from  Christianity, 
and  that  what  they  lack,  and  the  lack  is  very  serious,  is 
what  the  Christian  gospel  alone  can  impart." 

3.  Each  of  the  non-Christian  religions  is  full  of  evils 
and  shortcomings  from  which  Christianity  is  free.  "  I 
know,"  added  Dr.  Barrows  to  the  w^ords  just  quoted, 
"  that  beneath  the  shining  example  of  the  elect  few 
in  the  non-Christian  world  there  is  a  vast  area  of  idola- 
try and  pollution  and  unrest  and  superstition  and 
cruelty,  which  can  never  be  healed  by  the  forces  which 
are  found  in  the  non-Christian  systems."  It  would  not 
be  enough  to  show  that  great  evils  exist  in  non-Chris- 
tian lands.  The  contention  here  is  that  these  evils  are 
sanctioned  by  and  are  the  fruits  of  the  non-Christian 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       115 

religions.  Mohammedanism  expHcitly  commands  mur- 
der in  the  case  of  unbelievers  who  will  not  embrace 
Islam  or  pay  tribute,  and  especially  of  every  apos- 
tate from  Islam.  The  Koran  declares  that  those  who 
resist  God  and  His  Apostle  "  shall  be  slain  or  crucified 
or  have  their  hands  and  feet  cut  off  on  opposite  sides 
or  be  banished  the  land."  It  specifically  allows  slav- 
ery, and  the  claim  that  conversion  to  Islam  made  a 
slave  ipso  facto  free  is  simply  not  justified  by  the 
Koran.  Islam  also  ministers  to  lust,  practically  with- 
out restraint.  The  Koran  allows  four  wives  and  un- 
limited female  slaves,  and  declares  that  good  Mussul- 
mans "  shall  be  blameless  "  as  to  "  the  carnal  knowl- 
edge of  .  .  .  the  slaves  which  their  right  hands 
possess"  (Sura  Ixx. :  29,  30).  Furthermore,  it  places 
none  but  a  flimsy,  pecuniary  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
divorce.  "  Woman  in  the  ethics  of  the  Koran,"  as  Dr. 
Kellogg  says,  "  is  not  practically  regarded  as  a  human 
being,  but  as  an  animal,  to  be  used  merely  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  her  master,  who,  while  he  is  charged  to  treat  her 
with  kindness,  is  yet  formally  invested  with  unqualified 
authority  to  beat  or  confine  her  whenever  he  judge  her 
to  be  perverse,  and  abandon  her  when  he  please." 
Islam  also  makes  war  a  religious  duty,  not  in  the  sense 
of  justifying  it  for  the  punishment  of  wrong,  but  as  a 
means  of  spreading  the  religion. 

Hinduism  as  a  religion  fosters  obscenity  and  pollu- 
tion. It  is  true  that  it  enjoins  much  that  is  good.  But 
immorality  is  directly  sanctioned  by  the  character  of  the 
Hindu  gods,  by  the  teaching  of  the  sacred  books,  and 
by  the  nature  of  much  of  the  temple  worship.  There 
is  no  word  for  "  chaste  "  in  Hindi  which  could  be  ap- 
plied to  a  man.  Some  of  the  Hindu  sacred  books  are 
incapable  of  translation  for  vileness.  As  a  writer  in 
the  Indian  Evangelical  Revieiv  said :    "  I  dare  not  give 


Ii6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  you  dare  not  print  the  ipsissima  verba  of  an  Eng- 
lish version  of  the  original  Yajur  Veda  mantras. 
Even  a  Latin  translation  of  these  scandal- 
ous mantras  would  not,  I  imagine,  be  tolerated  in  a 
newspaper."  Of  the  priesthood  in  India,  the  Hindu, 
the  organ  of  orthodox  Hinduism  in  Madras,  and  a 
paper  of  high  standing,  declares :  "  Profoundly  ignor- 
ant as  a  class,  and  infinitely  selfish,  it  is  the  mainstay 
of  every  unholy,  immoral,  and  cruel  custom  and  su- 
perstition, from  the  wretched  dancing-girl,  who  insults 
the  Deity  by  her  existence,  to  the  pining  child-widow, 
whose  every  tear  and  every  hair  of  whose  head  shall 
stand  up  against  every  one  of  us  who  tolerate  it,  on  the 
day  of  judgment."  Of  the  shrines  and  endowed 
temples,  the  same  paper  says  in  another  issue :  "  The 
vast  majority  of  the  endowments  are  corrupt  to  the 
core.  They  are  a  festering  mass  of  crime  and  vice  and 
gigantic  swindling."  The  essence  of  Hinduism  is  a 
.  social  inequality.  It  sanctifies  injustice.  The  code  of 
Manu  declares  that  a  king  "  should  not  slay  a  Brah- 
man, even  if  he  be  occupied  in  crime  of  every  sort; 
but  he  should  put  him  out  of  the  realm  in  possession  of 
all  his  property  and  uninjured."  And,  again,  it  pro- 
vides that  "  a  Brahman  may  take  possession  of  the 
goods  of  a  Shudra  with  perfect  peace  of  mind,  since 
nothing  at  all  belongs  to  the  Shudra  as  his  own."  Fur- 
thermore, the  inequality  and  inferiority  of  woman  in 
India  is  explicitly  sanctioned  by  religion.  The  Shanda 
Purana  says,  "  Let  the  wife  who  wishes  to  perform 
sacred  oblation  wash  the  feet  of  her  lord  and  drink 
the  water.  The  husband  is  her  god,  her  priest,  and  her 
religion ;  wherefore,  abandoning  everything  else,  she 
ought  chiefly  to  worship  her  husband." 

Buddhism  is  a  direct  force  in  promoting  indolence 
in  Buddhist  lands.    Every  male  must  spend  part  of  his 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       117 

life  in  the  priesthood,  and  in  the  priesthood  must  make 
his  Hving  by  begging.  Buddhism  also  directly  at- 
tacks the  rights  of  woman.  It  denies  her  salvation  as  a 
woman.  Her  only  hope  is  in  some  transmigration  to 
be  born  as  a  man.  It  declares,  in  its  Scriptures,  that 
the  "  home  life  is  the  seat  of  impurity."  It  denies  sal- 
vation to  the  man  who  loves. 

And  the  trouble  with  China  is  in  her  Confucianism. 
That  there  is  good  there,  every  one  joyfully  admits; 
but  the  utter  hopelessness  and  helplessness  of  the  land 
are  due  to  her  sterile  system  of  theology  and  ethics, 
her  atheism.  It  is  the  Confucian  system  which  forbids 
all  change,  formalizes  life,  produces  pedantry,  breeds 
conceit,  and  would  hold  the  whole  race  separate  from 
mankind. 

If  it  be  said  that  all  this  is  unfair,  that  religions 
should  be  judged  by  what  is  best  in  them  and  not  by 
what  is  worst,  it  may  be  replied  that  that  is  true,  and 
that  what  is  good  has  already  been  acknowledged ;  but 
that  the  science  of  comparative  religion  is  a  poor  sort 
of  science  if  it  does  not  compare  but  varnishes  over  the 
vileness  of  the  ethnic  faiths,  and  evades  the  sharp  issue 
that  is  presented  here.  The  non-Christian  religions 
are  seamed  with  evil  and  unhoHness.  Christianity 
challenges  the  world  to  point  to  one  defect  in  her. 

It  is  often  said  that  there  are  evils  in  Christian  lands 
as  well  as  in  heathen  lands.  That  is  true,  but  it  is 
beside  the  mark.  The  point  is  that  the  evils  of  Chris- 
tian lands  exist  in  spite  of  their  religion  and  under  its 
ban,  while  the  evils  of  non-Christian  lands  are  the 
products  of  and  sanctioned  by  their  religions.  The 
sacredest  things  of  Christendom  are  the  purest  things. 
The  foulest  things  of  Asia  are  its  sacred  things.  It 
would  even  be  fair  to  add  that  the  best  virtues  of 
non-Christian  lands  are  the  natural  virtues  which  have 


ii8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

escaped  the  evil  influences  of  religion,  while  with  us 
our  best  virtues  are  the  direct  product  of  Christianity. 
And  all  this  is  not  casual  and  accidental.  So  far  as 
India  is  concerned,  it  results  from  a  radical  and  essen- 
tial difference  between  Christianity  and  Hinduism  in 
the  matter  of  the  relation  of  religion  to  ethics,  or  rather 
of  ethics  to  life.    As  Dr.  A.  H.  Bradford  says : 

"  Christianity  is  superior  to  the  other  religions  be- 
cause it  alone  identifies  religion  and  ethics.  Here  I 
wish  to  speak  with  care.  I  do  not  say  that  the  other 
religions  ignore  ethics,  but  that  in  them  ethics  is  not 
essential.  A  man  may  be  an  orthodox  Hindu  and 
treat  half  his  fellow  men  as  if  they  were  dogs ;  a  man 
may  be  a  sound  IMohammedan  and  believe  that  he  is 
justified  in  killing  those  who  are  not  Mohammedans; 
a  man  may  be  a  Buddhist  and  at  the  same  time  be  an 
adulterer;  but  if  a  man  treat  his  fellow  men  as  if  they 
were  dogs,  he  cannot  be  a  Christian ;  if  he  commits 
murder,  even  though  it  be  in  the  name  of  religion,  he 
is  a  murderer  and  not  a  Christian ;  if  he  is  an  adulterer, 
until  he  has  repented  and  forsaken  his  sin  he  is  not  a 
Christian,  Christianity  never  teaches  that  if  a  man 
holds  a  good  creed  he  may  live  a  bad  life.  .  .  . 
Jesus  identified  religion  and  morality." 

This  issue  cannot  be  too  sharply  presented  as  be- 
tween Christianity  and  Hinduism.  In  Hinduism  there 
is  no  indissoluble  connection  between  right  opinion 
and  right  life.  That  is  the  unanswerable  criticism 
which  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  makes  upon  Swami 
Vivakananda  and  the  religion  which  he  has  tried  to 
recommend  to  Western  minds.  There  is  no  vinculum 
in  it  between  religion  and  morality.  Indeed,  the  line 
between  good  and  evil  itself  disappears.     Dr.  Kellogg 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       119 

quotes  Mr.  Muhopadhaya,  an  educated  Bengali  gentle- 
man, as  saying,  in  The  Imitation  of  Sree  Krishna:  "  To 
our  mind  virtue  and  vice,  being  relative  terms,  can 
never  be  applied  to  one  who  is  regarded  as  the  Su- 
preme Being.  .  .  .  Conceive  a  man  who  is  try- 
ing his  utmost  to  fly  from  vice  to  its  opposite  pole, 
virtue;  .  .  .  imagine  a  being  to  whom  virtue 
and  vice  are  the  same,  and  you  will  find  that  the  latter 
is  infinitely  superior  to  the  former."  Nothing  could 
be  more  abhorrent  than  this  to  the  Christian  mind. 
And  yet  we  are  bidden  to  recognize  the  essential  kin- 
ship of  all  religions ! 

4.  It  follows  from  the  comparison,  not  of  the  actual 
life,  but  of  the  religious  ideals  of  Christians  and 
non-Christians,  that  the  sacred  book  of  Christianity  is 
of  a  class  wholly  above  the  books  of  the  ethnic  re- 
ligions. The  Bible  is  not  just  one  of  the  sacred  books 
of  the  world.  No  other  book  is  to  be  mentioned  in  the 
same  breath  with  it.  The  taste  which  the  Bible  itself 
has  created  often  suggests  nowadays  the  expurgation 
of  some  of  the  Old  Testament  stories ;  but  let  any  one 
compare  these  with  the  fourth  section  of  the  first  vol- 
ume of  the  Kojiki,  or  with  some  of  the  Tantras,  or  any 
of  scores  of  the  Hindu  sacred  writings,  or  with  Suras 
II.  and  IV.  of  the  Koran,  and  he  will  drop  them  with 
a  sense  of  shame  or  a  sense  of  horror,  and  come  back 
again  to  the  restrained,  chaste,  and  purposeful  records 
of  the  Christian  Scriptures.  When  we  compare  the 
Bible  with  the  religious  books  of  the  non-Christian  re- 
ligions, as  to  cosmology,  theology,  anthropology,  ethics, 
philosophy,  psychology,  history,  it  rises  above  them 
with  such  sheer  superiority  as  to  make  them  seem  in- 
sipid and  puerile.  Consider  the  influence  of  the  Bible 
for  good.  "  How  narrow  and  poor  in  comparison," 
exclaimed  Dr.  Barrows,  in  his  farewell  address  before 


I20        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

going  to  Asia  to  deliver  the  Haskell  lectures,  "  has 
been  the  ministry  of  other  sacred  books !  How  limited 
to  national  areas !  .  .  .  The  Bible,  entering  as 
life  and  truth,  justifies  its  claim  by  what  it  has  wrought 
for  the  savage  and  civilized  races  of  men.  It  has  lifted 
the  mind  and  transformed  the  life,  enlarged  the  horizon 
and  given  to  human  darkness  the  bright  atmosphere  of 
celestial  worlds.  To  the  ancient  Greek  the  knowledge 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  brought  fresh  con- 
stellations to  his  sensitive  and  ever-expanding  intelli- 
gence, and,  surveying  the  effects  w^hich  the  Bible  has 
wrought  on  some  modern  peoples  like  Japan,  ambitious 
to  get  out  of  the  primitive  stages  of  civilization,  one 
writer,  using  a  thoroughly  modern  metaphor,  tells  us 
that  '  the  translation  of  the  Bible  is  like  building  a  rail- 
road through  the  national  intellect.'  " 

5.  The  non-Christian  religions,  in  their  popular  and 
applied  forms,  grow  worse  and  worse.  The  chasm 
between  their  ideal  and  real  widens  every  year.  There 
is  enough  that  is  evil  in  their  ideal,  but  there  is  also 
much  that  is  good.  The  maxims  of  the  Confucian 
classics  are  often  admirable,  full  of  preservative  order 
for  the  life  of  men  and  of  states.  Buddha  must  have 
been  a  character  of  real  attractiveness  and  purity.  The 
Vedas  contain  noble  theistic  passages  and  many  high 
ethical  suggestions.  Mr.  Townsend  is  surely  right 
in  calling  Mohammed  "  The  great  Arabian."  But 
granting  all  that  can  be  claimed,  it  remains  true  that 
all  this  has  been  impotent.  However  great  and  pure 
the  initial  religious  impulse  of  the  ethnic  faiths,  or  the 
impulses  of  their  great  awakenings  or  historic  reshap- 
ings,  the  practical  life  of  their  adherents  drifts  further 
and  further  away  from  their  theoretic  ideals.  And 
there  is  in  these  religions  no  power  of  self-purifica- 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       121 

tion.  Their  golden  age  is  behind  them,  never  to 
reappear. 

Christianity,  on  the  other  hand,  has  the  power  of 
self-renovation.  Again  and  again  the  ideals  have  be- 
come obscured,  only  to  burst  forth  again  in  greater 
clearness  and  power.  And  never  has  the  gulf  between 
the  actual  life  of  Christians  and  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tianity been  as  narrow  as  to-day.  There  is  enough 
that  is  unsatisfactory  in  the  life  of  Christian  peoples 
and  inadequate  in  our  apprehension  of  the  Christian 
faith ;  but  we  understand  it  better  now  than  ever,  and 
we  draw  nearer  to  it  in  our  practice.  And  we  move 
on  toward  our  golden  age,  still  to  come. 

This  is  one  reason  why  Christianity  is  the  only  re- 
ligion of  progress.  All  the  peoples  who  are  beyond  its 
pale  are  stationary  or  retrogressive.  All  the  progress 
of  the  world  is  either  in  Christian  lands  or  where  Chris- 
tianity extends  its  influence.  It  is  inaccurate  to  at- 
tribute this  movement  to  race,  for  within  the  same  race 
the  Christian  element  awakens  to  life,  breaks  through 
its  restraints,  and  moves,  while  the  non-Christian  ele- 
ment remains  stagnant  and  dead. 

And  Christianity,  the  only  religion  which  begets 
progress,  is  the  only  religion  which  can  live  with  prog- 
ress. All  the  theoretical  defence  of  the  non-Christian 
religions  is  wasted.  The  relentless  movement  of 
destiny  is  crushing  them  out.  As  Griffith  Jones  says, 
with  true  discernment,  in  The  Ascent  Through  Christ: 
"  The  nations  called  Christian  are  everywhere  press- 
ing hard  upon  all  other  nations.  Western  civilization 
in  all  directions  is  disintegrating  both  the  customs  of 
savage  nations  and  the  more  stable  civilization  of  the 
East,  and  it  is  everywhere  being  shown  that  in  this 
general  break-up  of  old  and  effete  orders  there  is  an 


122       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

imminent  peril.  For  where  our  civilization  penetrates 
without  our  religion  it  is  invariably  disastrous  in  its 
effects.  It  never  fails  to  destroy  the  confidence  of  sub- 
ject races  in  their  own  creeds  and  customs,  without 
furnishing  anything  in  place  of  their  sanctions  and 
restraints.  The  result  is  everywhere  to  be  seen  in  the 
way  in  which  heathen  nations  neglect  our  virtues  and 
emulate  our  vices.  The  advice  sometimes  given  to  the 
missionary,  therefore,  to  leave  the  people  to  whom 
he  ministers  to  their  simpler  faith,  is  beside  the  mark. 
These  faiths  are  inevitably  going;  soon  they  will  be 
gone ;  and  the  question  presses  :  What  then  ?  If  his- 
tory proves  anything,  it  proves  that  a  nation  wathout 
a  faith  is  a  doomed  nation;  that  it  cannot  hold  to- 
gether; that  it  inevitably  decays  and  dies.  From  this 
point  of  view  alone,  then,  there  is  a  tremendous  re- 
sponsibility laid  upon  us.  The  impact  of  our  civiliza- 
tion is  breaking  up  the  fabric  and  undermining  the 
foundations  of  the  ethnic  religions.  Without  religion 
of  some  sort  nations  must  perish.  Therefore,  we  must 
see  to  it  that  we  give  something  in  the  place  of  what 
we  take  away,  and  that  something  must  be  the  Chris- 
tian faith  or  it  will  be  nothing." 

And  the  profound  reason  for  this  radical  difference 
between  Christianity  and  the  ethnic  religions  is  found 
in  the  unfolding  of  a  divine  life  in  man.  They  are 
codes,  methods,  opinions,  institutions.  Christianity  is 
not  merely  a  better  code,  method,  opinion,  institution. 
It  is  Christ,  the  divine  Lord  moving  in  history  and  hu- 
man hearts.  And  missions  are  not  an  offer  of  some 
superior  thing,  but  of  this  one  inflowing  of  divine  life. 
"  I  believe,"  said  Mrs.  Bishop,  at  the  twenty-first 
anniversary  of  the  Oxford  Mission  to  Calcutta,  "  and 
this  belief  has  been  forced  upon  me  in  spite  of  a  very 
great  indifference  to  missions  with  which  T  started  on 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       123 

my  journey,  that  England  can  offer  to  these  races 
nothing  that  will  bless  and  change  their  lives  and 
affect  them  for  lasting  good,  except  an  historical 
Christ,  a  reigning  Christ — an  object  not  only  of  wor- 
ship, but  an  object  of  love."  Yes,  and  not  an  object 
of  love  only,  but  a  fountain  of  life  as  well. 

6.  What,  then,  ought  the  attitude  of  Christians  to 
be  toward  the  non-Christian  religions?  In  the  first 
place,  it  goes  without  saying  that  they  should  not  be 
treated  with  scorn  and  contempt.  There  is  a  great  deal 
in  them  deserving  scorn  and  contempt.  It  is  not  be- 
cause of  what  they  are  that  we  should  treat  them  and 
their  adherents  with  kindness  and  pity.  It  is  because 
we  are  Christians.  In  the  second  place,  it  ought  not  to 
need  to  be  said  that  the  ethnic  religions  should  not  be 
treated  with  silly  and  ignorant  sentimentalism,  or  with 
foolish  and  utterly  indiscriminating  tolerance.  They 
should  be  treated  just  as  we  ask  to  have  Christianity 
treated — with  absolute  justice.  We  do  not  ask  any 
favour  for  Christianity.  We  challenge  men  to  find 
a  flaw  in  it  or  to  point  out  any  evil.  There  is  no  right 
way  to  judge  other  religions  save  to  seek  fearlessly 
and  relentlessly  for  the  exact  truth  about  them.  The 
complaint  of  one  writer  on  comparative  religion  is 
wholly  unscientific  and  unjustified :  "  We  judge  the 
ethnic  faiths  harshly  and  unjustly,  by  an  over-insist- 
ence on  their  darker  aspects,  instead  of  comparing  their 
best  with  our  best."  That  is  special  pleading  of  an  un- 
warranted sort.  We  ought  to  compare  other  religions 
and  Christianity  in  detail  and  exhaustively,  leaving 
nothing  out.  It  is  absurd  to  throw  out  the  despicable 
elements  of  other  religions,  and  compare  the  residue 
with  Christianity.  The  comparison  should  be  of  like 
with  like,  evil  with  evil,  good  with  good,  influence  with 
influence.     The  Vedas  should  not  be  compared  with 


124        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

morality  in  the  Red  Light  District.  The  Red  Light 
District  is  not  Christianity.  Compare  the  Hindus  with 
the  Americans  if  you  will,  but  compare  the  Vedas  with 
the  Old  Testament  and  Krishna  with  Christ.  Com- 
pare without  favour.  The  truth  is  the  supreme  thing. 
Some  hold  that  while  Christianity  is  superior  to  the 
other  religions,  yet  each  has  its  contribution  to  make 
to  the  great  world  religion.  One  of  the  officially  de- 
clared objects  of  the  Chicago  Parliament  of  Religions 
in  1893  was  "  to  inquire  what  light  each  religion  has 
ofTered  or  may  afford  to  the  other  religions  of  the 
world."  Dr.  Miller,  of  Madras,  set  forth  this  view 
in  a  lecture  that  created  great  discussion  at  the  time, 
just  before  he  left  India  in  1895.  "  India  has  her 
ideal,"  he  said,  "  and  whatever  be  the  weeds  which 
hinder  its  bringing  forth  fruit  unto  perfection,  it  is 
an  ideal  of  which  the  world  has  need."  This  ideal 
he  defined  as  "  the  omnipenetrativeness  of  God  and  the 
unitedness  and  solidarity  of  men."  Now  this  view 
that  Christianity  is  not  the  final  and  complete  religion 
is  here  and  now  explicitly  and  unhesitatingly  contra- 
dicted. No  religion  can  supply  it  with  anything  it 
lacks.  Christians  may  be  enabled  to  understand  better 
what  their  own  religion  contains  by  being  forced  to  dis- 
cover in  it  what  other  peoples  and  nations  require 
which  has  as  yet  been  undiscovered  or  only  partially 
appreciated  by  us.  But  the  Christian  religion  is  com- 
plete and  needs  nothing  from  any  other.  It  holds  all 
ideals  needed  by  all  men.  In  opposing  the  establish- 
ment of  a  chair  at  Berlin  for  the  study  of  comparative 
religion,  and  in  declaring  himself  as  opposed  to  the 
study  itself,  Harnack  was  too  harsh  and  narrow;  but 
there  is  a  vast  deal  more  to  be  said  in  favour  of  his 
attitude  than  of  that  of  the  others  just  quoted.  His 
reasons,  as  a  correspondent  gives  them,   were:    (i) 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       125 

"  There  is  only  one  religion,  which  was  revealed  from 
God.  Mohammedanism,  Confucianism,  Buddhism, 
Judaism,  Brahmanism,  and  other  so-called  religions  are 
the  inventions  of  men.  One  has  come  down  from 
heaven ;  the  others  are  of  the  earth,  earthly.  One  is  a 
divine  revelation  from  the  Creator  of  the  universe,  the 
others  are  moral  philosophy.  (2)  The  theological  de- 
partment of  the  university  was  established  by  the  gov- 
ernment to  train  men  for  the  ministry.  The  Bible,  the 
inspired  word  of  God,  is  the  only  necessary  text-book. 
It  contains  enough  of  truth  and  knowledge  to  employ 
students  during  their  lifetime,  and  it  would  be  better  for 
them  to  stick  to  it  rather  than  waste  their  strength  and 
time  in  the  study  of  other  creeds  which  can  be  of  no 
use  whatever  to  them.  (3)  If  theologians  or  students 
have  curiosity  to  know  what  has  been  taught  by  im- 
postors and  the  inventors  of  false  religions,  they  can 
do  so  in  connection  with  the  department  of  history  or 
philosophy."  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  violent  or  big- 
oted, but  on  the  other  hand  it  is  possible  to  be  too  com- 
plaisant and  complimentary. 

A  distinction  should  be  drawn  in  considering  our 
attitude  toward  the  non-Christian  religions,  between  the 
relations  of  individuals  meeting  as  individuals,  and  the 
relations  of  religions  officially  and  representatively. 
In  the  first  case  all  misunderstanding  can  easily  be 
avoided.  The  purpose  of  the  Christian  is  to  commend 
his  religion  to  his  brother,  to  persuade  him  of  its 
truth,  to  lead  him  to  accept  it.  In  the  latter  case  the 
purpose  is  conference,  with  recognition  involved  and 
the  ofifer  of  equality.  It  is  well-nigh  impossible  to 
carry  this  through  without  strengthening  the  advocate 
and  representative  in  his  position.  This  was  the  issue 
of  the  Parliament  of  Religions.  Among  its  objects 
were  these:     (i)   "To  bring  together  in  conference. 


126        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

for  the  first  time  in  history,  the  leading  representatives 
of  the  great  historic  religions  of  the  world.  (2)  To 
show  to  men,  in  the  most  impressive  way,  what  and 
how  many  important  truths  the  various  religions 
hold  and  teach  in  common.  (3)  To  promote  and 
deepen  the  spirit  of  true  brotherhood  among  the 
religions  of  the  world,  through  friendly  conference  and 
mutual  good  understanding,  while  not  seeking  to  foster 
the  temper  of  indift'erentism,  and  not  striving  to  achieve 
any  formal  and  outward  unity.  (4)  To  set  forth,  by 
those  most  competent  to  speak,  what  are  deemed  the 
important  distinctive  truths  held  and  taught  by  each 
religion,  and  by  the  various  chief  branches  of  Chris- 
tendom." The  consequence  in  America  was  to  stimu- 
late the  study  of  the  other  religions  for  good  and  also 
for  evil,  but  abroad  its  influence  was  distinctly  stiffen- 
ing to  the  non-Christian  religions,  so  far  as  they  were 
touched  at  all.  Thus  Baurin  Yatsu  Buchi  and  Shaku 
Soyen,  two  of  the  Buddhist  delegates  from  Japan,  on 
returning,  reported  in  Yokohama  their  impression  as 
follows : 

"  The  Parliament  was  called  because  the  Western 
nations  have  come  to  realize  the  weakness  and  folly  of 
Christianity,  and  they  really  wished  to  hear  from  us  of 
our  religion  and  to  learn  what  the  best  religion  is. 
During  the  meetings  one  very  wealthy  man  from  New 
York  became  a  convert  to  Buddhism,  and  was  initiated 
into  its  rites;  he  is  a  man  of  great  influence  and  his 
conversion  may  be  said  to  mean  more  than  the  con- 
version of  ten  thousand  ordinary  men ;  so  we  may  say 
truthfully  that  we  made  ten  thousand  converts  at  that 
meeting.  The  great  majority  of  Christians  drink  and 
commit   various  gross   sins,   and   live   very   dissolute 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       127 

lives,  although  it  is  a  very  common  belief  and  serves 
as  a  social  adornment;  Its  lack  of  power  proves  its 
weakness.  The  meetings  showed  the  great  superiority 
of  Buddhism  over  Christianity,  and  the  mere  fact  of 
calHng  the  meetings  showed  that  Americans  and  other 
Western  peoples  had  lost  their  faith  in  Christianity, 
and  were  ready  to  accept  the  teachings  of  our  superior 
religion." 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  dig  up  this  ancient 
history  if  it  were  not  such  an  excellent  illustration 
of  the  effect  of  the  attitude  of  concealment  of  distinc- 
tions and  the  abatement  by  Christianity  of  its  essential 
claims.  Every  man  who  has  tried  to  persuade  other 
men  upon  any  issue  knows  that  while  a  starting-point 
of  common  agreement  is  always  necessary,  it  is  equally 
necessary  at  once  to  move  on  from  this  to  the  points  of 
dift'erence  upon  which  conviction  is  sought.  And  the 
peril  among  simple  and  ignorant  people  always  is  that 
the  initial  acknowledgment  of  common  truth  will  be 
made  a  justification  of  adhering  to  old  opinion,  and 
that  further  persuasion  will  be  in  vain.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  people  are  won  not  by  admitting  that  what  they 
have  is  quite  satisfactory,  but  by  proving  that  it  is  not. 
It  is  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  Dr.  Mil- 
ler's position  should  result  in  few  conversions.  What 
is  there  to  be  converted  to?  We  are  not  offering  to 
the  heathen  world  simply  a  rearrangement  or  clarifica- 
tion of  ideas  which  it  has  already.  We  are  offering  it 
salvation  through  Christ,  the  Saviour.  And  their 
own  religions  are  absolutely  barren  of  that  concep- 
tion. We  need  to  remind  ourselves  often  of  what 
Bishop  Gore  called  "  the  duty  of  right  intolerance  in 
these  days  when  there  is  such  a  tendency  to  break 


128       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

down  moral  distinctions  and  throw  over  everything  the 
mantle  of  an  invertebrate  charity." 

It  is  said  that  St.  Paul  indicated  to  us,  in  his  speech 
at  Athens,  the  right  attitude  of  Christianity  toward  the 
non-Christian  religions.  But  that  may  be  questioned. 
To  discover  St.  Paul's  attitude  toward  heathenism, 
read  the  first  chapters  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans, 
That  is  comparative  religion  with  a  judgment  of  thun- 
der against  the  whole  world.  If  it  seems  harsh,  let  us 
read  Isaiah's  condemnation  of  idolatry  (Isaiah  xliv.  lo- 
17)  and  the  solemn  intolerance  of  the  Apostle  of  love 
(II.  John  7,  9,  10). 

If  the  contentions  here  set  forth  are  valid,  it  follows 
that  the  missionary  obligation  rests  on  principles  which 
are  incontrovertible.  Christians  have  the  one  true  re- 
ligion. They  are  bound  to  propagate  it.  In  doing  this, 
they  are  making  known  to  the  world  the  only  salva- 
tion. For  "  the  offer  of  Christ  to  sinful  men  wherever 
they  can  be  found  is  not  the  offer  of  an  alternative  re- 
ligion to  them,  in  the  sense  in  which  Hinduism  and 
Taoism  and  Confucianism  are  religions.  It  is  the  offer 
to  men  of  the  secret  of  life,  of  something  that  will 
cleanse  them  from  all  that  hinders  and  defeats  their 
spiritual  natures,  of  something  that  will  enable  them 
to  realize  their  true  selves,  and  become  men  in  the 
true  and  full  sense  of  the  word.  We  do  our  Master 
little  honour  when  we  place  Him  among  a  group  of 
teachers  competing  for  the  acceptance  of  men.  He  is 
not  one  of  many  founders  of  religions.  He  is  the 
source  and  fountain  of  all,  in  so  far  as  they  have  caught 
a  prophetic  glimpse  of  His  truth,  and  anticipated 
something  of  His  spirit,  and  given  a  scattered  hint 
here  and  there  of  His  secret.  He  is  the  truth,  the  tvpe, 
the  saving  grace  of  which  they  faintly  and  vaguely 


Christianity  the  Sufficient  Religion       129 

dreamed ;  the  desire  of  all  nations,  the  crown  and 
essence  of  humanity;  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  who 
by  the  loftiness  of  His  teaching,  the  beauty  of  His 
character,  the  sufficiency  of  His  atoning  sacrifice,  is 
able  to  save  to  the  uttermost  all  who  will  come  to  Him 
and  trust  in  Him." 


XIII 

THE  INIQUITY  OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS  IN 
CHINA 

THERE  appeared  some  time  ago,  in  The  New 
York  Times,  an  article  by  Mr.  Sydney  Brooks, 
entitled  "  Regulation  of  Missionaries  in  China." 
Its  main  propositions  were  that  missionaries 
have  no  right  to  be  in  the  interior  of  China,  and  that, 
whether  there  or  on  the  coast,  they  are  supported 
only  by  foreign  arms,  that  they  are  ignorant,  untact- 
ful  and  troublesome,  and  doing  not  a  little  evil,  and 
that  they  are  responsible  for  the  political  difficulties. 
The  remedy  proposed  is  that  missionaries  should  be 
deprived  of  their  foreign  protection,  and  even  of  their 
foreign  citizenship. 

A  good  deal  of  this  sort  of  thing  has  appeared  in 
the  newspapers.  It  is  easy  to  write,  for  it  requires 
no  patient  study  of  facts,  and  it  pleases  many  people, 
who  are  not  reluctant  to  find  reasons  for  refraining 
from  supporting  the  missionary  enterprise.  And  it  is 
in  the  main  harmless.  Indeed,  it  is  encouraging  in  a 
way,  for  it  shows  that  some  who  w'ould  be  glad  to 
pass  missions  by  as  unimportant  and  ineffectual  are 
forced  to  confess  their  power.  Such  articles  are 
scarcely  worth  answering,  save  to  call  attention  now 
and  then  to  their  extravagances  and  to  make  them 
an  occasion  for  setting  a  little  more  clearly  before  the 
public  the  significance  and  character  of  Christian 
missions. 

Mr.  Brooks's  article  especially  would  not  call  for 
notice  if  it  were  not  for  its  plausibility  and  the  pub- 
licity it  has  received.     It  is  not  original,  it  is  not  in- 

130 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   131 

telligent,  and  it  is  not  true.  It  is  in  part  a  conden- 
sation of  jNlr.  Alexander  I\lichie's  books  on  Mis- 
sionaries in  China,  and  China  and  Christianity, 
with  scant  credit  given  to  Air.  Michie,  and  with  little 
of  that  "  openness  of  mind  "  which  the  author  credits 
to  Mr.  Michie,  and  which  saves  that  stringent  critic 
from  the  unpleasant  spirit  and  the  indiscriminate 
sneers  of  Mr,  Brooks,  and  from  some  of  his  blunders. 
"  The  Chinese,"  he  says,  for  example,  "  cannot  for 
a  moment  be  brought  to  believe  that  women  who 
.  .  .  worship  in  the  same  church  along  side  of 
men  can  possibly  be  moral."  There  are  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  Chinese  temples  which  testify  against  this 
judgment.  There  are  no  separate  temples,  or  hours 
of  worship  for  men  and  women  in  China.  "  Men  and 
women,"  as  a  correspondent  of  The  China  Mail  writes, 
"  come  and  go  (in  the  temples),  acquaintances  and  ab- 
solute strangers  elbowing  each  other,  rubbing  against 
€ach  other,  tens  and  scores  and  hundreds  of  them." 
That  has  been  Chinese  usage,  and  is  not  regarded 
as  an  outrage  on  ethical  propriety.  As  a  matter  of 
fact.  Christian  worship  is  more  orderly,  more  ethically 
correct  than  the  worship  in  Chinese  temples.  Let  any 
traveller  attend  the  most  popular  temples  in  Canton, 
for  example,  and  then  any  Christian  chapel  or  church, 
many  of  which  have  partitions  separating  the  sexes,  and 
contrast  them.  It  is  true  that  the  infamous  publica- 
tions sent  out  by  Chou  Han  from  Hunan  made  some 
such  criticism  as  that  of  Mr.  Brooks ;  but  it  was  with 
slanderous  and  malicious  purpose,  and  the  temples 
of  Hunan  daily  refuted  his  falsehood. 

Each  of  Mr.  Brooks's  propositions  is  surrounded  by 
such  misinformation.  He  alleges  that  the  missionary's 
"*'  presence  in  the  interior  is  in  itself  a  violation  of  a 
.solemn   compact."      What   compact?      Residence    and 


132       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

acquisition  of  property  by  missionaries  in  the  interior 
of  China  are  guaranteed  by  clear  treaty  provisions,  con- 
firmed by  imperial  edicts,  and  acknowledged  by  the 
Chinese  officials.  The  British  treaty  of  1858,  Art. 
XII.,  contains  the  words,  "  British  subjects,  whether  at 
the  ports  or  at  other  places,  desiring  to  build,  etc." 
More  than  once  Consuls  and  Chinese  officials  have  in- 
terpreted these  words  as  giving  the  right  to  reside  and 
purchase  property  in  the  interior.  In  some  treaties 
(Netherlands,  Austrian,  Spanish)  it  is  declared  that 
merchants  "  shall  not  be  at  liberty  to  open  houses  of 
business  or  shops  in  the  interior;  "  but  no  treaty  con- 
tains such  restrictions  as  to  missionaries.  In  the  Chi- 
nese text  of  the  French  treaty  of  1858,  Art.  III.,  it  is 
stated,  "  It  is  permitted  to  French  missionaries  to  rent 
and  purchase  land  in  ail  the  provinces  and  to  erect 
buildings  thereon  at  pleasure."  Whatever  questions 
others  may  have  raised  about  this  clause,  the  Chinese 
Government  has  never  denied  its  authenticity  or  va- 
lidity. Indeed,  Chinese  officials  of  their  own  accord 
have  often  extended  these  rights  to  missionaries,  and 
on  the  declaration  of  war  between  China  and  Japan, 
the  Chinese  Foreign  Office  at  Pekin  addressed  to  the 
Ministers  of  foreign  countries  a  memorandum  re- 
questing them  to  notify  missionaries  to  remain  at 
their  posts,  and  promising  all  such  the  protection  of 
the  Chinese  Government.  The  rights  of  merchants 
and  traders  to  reside  and  purchase  property  in  the  in- 
terior are  far  less  solidly  established  than  those  of 
missionaries.  Indeed,  the  Netherlands  treaty,  which 
in  Art.  III.  denied  to  merchants  the  right  of  carrying 
on  business  in  the  interior,  provided  in  Art.  TV.  that 
"  .\^etherlands  missionaries  of  the  Christian  religion, 
intent  upon  the  peaceful  propagation  of  the  gospel  in 
the  interior  of  China,  shall  enjoy  the  protection  of  the 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   133 

Chinese  authorities."  I  ask.  What  solemn  compact 
is  violated  by  the  presence  of  missionaries  in  the  in- 
terior ? 

But  it  is  asserted  also  that  the  missionary  is  "  sup- 
ported and  protected  by  foreign  arms,"  that  "  the 
evangelists  are  maintained  by  foreign  arms;  they  live 
within  call  of  the  avenging  gunboat,  and  they  are 
not  backward  in  summoning  its  aid."  The  Presbyter- 
ian Board  has  twenty-four  stations  in  China,  at  which 
missionaries  reside.  Of  these,  nine  at  the  most  are 
within  reach  of  gunboats.  The  great  majority  of  mis- 
sionaries are  in  the  interior,  and  I  do  not  believe  that 
Mr.  Brooks  can  cite  one  instance  where  missionaries 
alone  have  summoned  a  gunboat's  aid.  There  may 
have  been  such,  but  I  cannot  remember  one.  Large 
bodies  of  missionaries  in  China  are  opposed  on  prin- 
ciple to  doing  such  a  thing,  and  of  those  who  are  not, 
the  majority  would  rather  suffer  the  petty  difficulties 
of  oppression  and  injustice  than  resort  to  such  an  ex- 
treme measure ;  and  have  so  suffered  quietly,  or  re- 
sorted only  to  peaceful  representations  to  their  Con- 
suls. But  doubtless  Mr.  Brooks  does  not  intend  to 
be  taken  literally  here.  If  he  does,  then  I  have  only 
to  say  that  his  statement  is  false,  most  of  all,  his  dec- 
laration that  the  missionaries  are  not  backward  in 
appealing  for  armed  interference.  I  suppose  he 
means,  however,  by  these  reckless  statements,  only 
that  "  missionaries  were  thrust  upon  him  (the  Chi- 
nese) through  treaties  exacted  by  foreign  coercion  " 
and  that  the  Chinese  "  Government  protects  them 
against  its  own  inclinations,  and  against  the  sense  of 
the  people,  through  fear  of  foreign  pressure."  He 
neglects  to  state  that  the  wars  which  were  terminated 
by  these  treaties  were  fought  for  the  sake  of  com- 
merce, and  the  first  one,  as  the  Chinese  maintain,  in 


134       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

behalf  of  a  ruinous  and  abhorrent  traffic;  that  no  war 
has  ever  been  waged  nor  any  battle  been  fought  for 
the  imposition  of  missionaries  upon  China  or  for  their 
protection.  And  the  implication  of  this  second  quo- 
tation I  have  just  made  from  his  article  is  the  com- 
mon and  erroneous  one  that  the  Chinese  Government 
has  a  peculiar  dislike  of  the  missionaries  as  such, 
while  it  has  learned  to  endure  other  foreigners. 
"  When  the  ordinary  foreigner  is  tolerated,"  says  ]\lr. 
Brooks,  "  they  (missionaries)  are  hated."  "  The 
trader,  the  consul  and  the  diplomat  have  won  their 
position.  They  are  not  liked,  but  they  are  acquiesced 
in."  Now  it  is  significant  that  in  the  very  document 
to  which  Mr.  Brooks  appeals  as  proposing  "  the  best 
and  only  means  of  escape  "  from  present  difficulties,  the 
Chinese  Government  declares,  "  The  Chinese  Govern- 
ment ...  is  not  opposed  to  the  work  of  the 
missions."  Innumerable  edicts  and  proclamations 
have  commended  the  missionaries.  I  have  before  me  a 
copy  of  one  of  these  issued  by  the  Emperor  in  1844, 
sixteen  years  before  the  treaties  which  'Mr.  Brooks 
says  thrust  missionaries  on  China.  The  Rescript  of 
Prince  Kung,  issued  in  1862,  declared :  "  The  mis- 
sionaries are  well-disposed  men,  and  are  in  their  own 
country  greatly  respected  by  others,  and  whereas  their 
first  object  is  to  instruct  men  to  do  good,  they  must  be 
treated  with  more  than  usual  high  consideration." 
Scores  of  proclamations  to  the  same  eflfect  have  been 
issued  by  local  prefects.  One  issued  in  1895,  by  the 
Prefect  of  Nanking,  will  serve  as  illustrative  of  many : 
"  Now  having  examined  the  doctrine  halls  in  every 
place  pertaining  to  the  prefecture,  we  find  that  there 
have  been  established  free  schools  where  the  poor  chil- 
dren of  China  may  receive  instruction ;  hospitals  where 
Chinamen  may  freely  receive  healing;  that  the  mis- 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   135 

sionaries  are  all  really  good ;  not  only  do  they  not  take 
the  people's  possessions,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  desire 
men's  praise.  .  .  .  Although  Chinamen  are 
pleased  to  do  good,  there  are  none  who  equal  the  mis- 
sionaries." Prior  to  the  issue  of  this  proclamation, 
the  magistrate  invited  the  missionaries  to  dinner,  and 
treated  them  with  unusual  honour.  If  it  is  said  that 
these  utterances  are  insincere,  and  exacted  by  "  fear 
of  foreign  pressure,"  it  may  be  replied  that  there  are 
too  many  cases  in  which  such  suspicions  can  be  proved 
to  be  unfounded. 

I  do  not  cite  these  edicts  as  worthy  of  acceptance 
at  face  value,  but  only  as  supporting  the  assertion 
that  the  official  utterances  of  the  Chinese  Government 
are  favourable  to  missions,  and  that  the  insinuation 
that  Christian  missions,  as  such,  are  detested  by  the 
Chinese  is  unjust.  Christianity  is  objected  to 
primarily  not  because  of  its  doctrines  or  practices, 
but  because  it  is  a  foreign  religion,  and  because  Euro- 
pean Governments  have  succeeded  in  deeply  impress- 
ing its  foreign  connections  upon  tlie  Chinese  mind  by 
the  way  they  have  made  it  a  cat's  paw,  and  pretext 
for  political  and  territorial  aggrandizement.  This 
view  is  easily  capable  of  proof.  The  very  placards 
and  publications  which  produce  anti-missionary  dis- 
turbances speak  of  the  missionaries  not  as  Christian 
propagandists,  but  as  foreign  intruders.  "  Attack 
and  beat  the  foreigners."  "  Determinedly  destroy  the 
Western  men."  These  are  specimens  of  Hunan  mot- 
toes. "  All  dealings  with  foreigners  are  detestable. 
These  men  have  no  fathers  or  mothers.  Their  off- 
spring are  beasts,"  is  a  sample  Canton  proclamation, 
scattered  in  a  city  where  the  Chinese  have  been  deal- 
ing commercially  with  foreigners  for  hundreds  of 
years.     Such  placards  are  issued  where  there  are  no 


136       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

missionaries.  As  soon  as  news  arrived  that  Shashi 
was  to  be  made  an  open  port  in  1896,  anti-foreign 
placards  were  posted  over  the  city.  There  have  been, 
and  according  to  ex-consul  Read  are,  no  missionaries 
at  Shashi,  And  outrages  are  not  confined  to  the  per- 
sons of  missionaries.  Air.  Alargary  was  not  a  mission- 
ary, and  it  was  the  Ministers,  not  the  missionaries, 
who  were  the  centre  of  attack  in  Pekin. 

The  missionary  appears  prominently  because  he  is 
everywhere.  He  is  the  only  foreigner  that  most  of 
the  Chinese  see.  He  lives  where  no  trader  will  go. 
And  so  he  bears  the  brunt  of  anti-foreign  dislike.  For 
this  his  reward  is  the  sneers  and  ignorant  reviling  of 
men  like  Mr.  Brooks.  The  missionary  is  doing  his 
own  work,  but  he  is  doing,  too,  the  work  of  civiliza- 
tion. He  is  its  vanguard.  As  has  been  well  said, 
"  China  has  been  opened  professedly  by  treaty,  but 
China  has  to  be  opened  by  something  else  besides  a 
treaty.  There  is  an  enormous  amount  of  personal  and 
friendly  contact  work  to  be  done  and  that  is  being 
done  by  missionaries  on  a  scale  of  magnitude,  with  a 
diffusiveness,  and  general  tact  fulness,  that  entitle 
them  to  commendation,  and  not  censure."  The  mis- 
sionary is  helping  to  open  the  Empire,  while  the  reac- 
tionary mandarins  want  to  keep  it  shut.  He  is  in- 
domitable. He  has  a  motive  which  makes  life  and 
comfort  of  secondary  consequence.  He  secures  a 
lodgment  where  civilians  would  fail.  "  He  gets  access 
to  the  people;  he  talks  to  them  in  their  own  mother 
tongue ;  he  shows  them  that  the  foreigner  is  not  the 
horrid  monster  he  has  been  pictured  to  them ;  but  a 
human  being  like  one  of  themselves — a  man  who 
knows  how  to  be  neighbourly  and  courteous,  and  pays 
his  debts  and  can  be  trusted ;  who  visits  the  sick  and 
helps  the  poor,  and  evidently  seeks  the  good  of  the 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   137 

community  where  he  is.  His  notions  as  they  consider 
them,  about  a  resurrection  from  the  dead  and  a  future 
life,  may  not  interest  them  much;  but  the  man  him- 
self they  do  appreciate,  and  they  say  that  if  all  for- 
eigners conduct  themselves  like  that,  they  cannot  be 
such  a  bad  lot  after  all." 

But  this  is  not  Mr.  Brooks's  view.  In  his  opinion, 
missionaries  are  "  not  well  educated,"  are  untactful, 
careless  of  local  prejudice,  speaking  a  "  bastard  Chi- 
nese," guilty  of  "  blundering  provocation,"  ignorant 
of  "  the  philosophy  he  is  intent  on  overthrowing  or 
the  language  which  must  be  his  chief  weapon," 
bigoted  and  sectarian,  "  enthusiastic  girls  who  scam- 
per up  and  down  the  country."  I  should  like  to  have 
the  names  of  the  missionaries  in  China  with  whom  Mr. 
Brooks  is  personally  acquainted,  and  who  have  sup- 
plied him  with  that  knowledge  of  them  and  their 
disgraceful  defects  which  alone  can  entitle  a  man  to 
issue  such  a  slanderous  representation.  I  know  more 
than  two  hundred  missionaries  in  China,  and  am 
familiar  with  the  methods  of  selection  and  the  re- 
quirements of  the  various  missionary  boards  and  so- 
cieties at  work  there,  and  I  have  met  also  many  for- 
eigners in  China  in  other  occupations,  and  I  place  my 
knowledge  against  Mr.  Brooks's  ignorance  in  saying 
that  the  average  missionary  is  far  better  educated, 
better  bred,  more  familiar  with  the  people,  their 
language  and  their  thought,  and  infinitely  more  in 
sympathy  with  them,  than  the  average  foreigner,  and 
that  no  other  foreigners  in  China — merchants,  traders 
or  diplomats — are  superior  to  the  best  missionaries, 
and  very  few  of  them  their  equals.  With  that  open- 
mindedness  which  Mr.  Brooks  so  admires  in  others, 
Mr.  Michie  avoids  any  such  indiscriminate  abuse  as 
Mr,  Brooks  allows  himself  in  his  unrelieved  picture 


138       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  missionary  incompetency.  "  The  great  service 
which  missionaries  have  rendered  to  the  cause  of 
knowledge  can  never  be  forgotten,"  wrote  j\lr.  Alichie, 
seven  years  ago.  "  It  is  to  their  labours  that  we  owe 
what  we  know  of  the  Chinese  history,  language  and 
literature.  Missionaries  compiled  the  only  diction- 
aries as  yet  in  common  use ;  a  missionary  translated 
the  classics  into  English,  laying  the  whole  world  un- 
der perpetual  obligation ;  missionaries  have  explained 
the  Chinese  religions.  A  missionary  has  quite  recently 
made  a  valuable  contribution  to  descriptive  anthro- 
pology, the  first  attempt  at  a  systematic  analysis  of  the 
Chinese  character.  And,  turning  toward  the  Chinese 
side,  the  missionaries  have  the  credit  of  awakening 
thought  in  the  country,  and  their  great  industry  in  cir- 
culating useful  and  Christian  knowledge  in  vernacu- 
lar publications  of  various  sorts,  though  comparatively 
barren  of  result  in  its  main  purpose,  has  spread  the  light 
of  Western  civilization  far  and  wide  in  the  Empire. 
The  benefits  conferred  on  China  by  these  literary  la- 
bours, and  especially  by  medical  missions  "  (for  which 
Mr.  Brooks  has  not  one  appreciative  word),  "  are  fully 
acknowledged  by  educated  Chinese  who  have  no  lean- 
ing toward  Christianity  as  a  religion."  Li  Hung 
Chang  is  one  of  these.  "  You  have  started,"  he  told 
the  representatives  of  missionary  organizations  in  New 
York,  September  i,  1896,  "you  have  started  numer- 
ous educational  establishments  which  have  served  as 
the  best  means  to  enable  our  countrymen  to  acquire 
a  fair  knowledge  of  the  modern  arts  and  sciences  of  the 
West."  The  missionaries  are  the  most  intelligent  for- 
eigners in  China.  They  are  the  true  representatives 
of  the  West.  They  are  organizing  the  schools  and 
colleges  which  the  Chinese  themselves  are  founding. 
They  have  been  interpreters  for  our  Consuls  and  Minis- 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   139 

ters.  For  years  a  missionary  did  the  work  of  the 
American  Legation  in  Peking,  while  others  bore  the 
title  and  the  credit.  And  these  are  not  merely  ex- 
ceptional men.  Almost  all  missionaries  are  required 
to  pass  language  examinations,  and  if  any  fail  to  ac- 
quire the  Chinese,  they  are  quietly  retired.  As  for 
their  being  poorly  educated,  almost  all  the  men  sent 
from  America  are  college  graduates,  and  the  women 
far  better  educated  than  ordinarily  well  educated 
women  at  home.  Mr.  Brooks  could  learn  many  things 
from  a  proclamation  of  the  Prefect  of  Paotingfu  in 
1895,  in  which  he  said,  the  missionaries  "  are  chosen 
from  men  of  superior  character  and  learning,  who, 
after  successfully  passing  an  examination,  are  suf- 
fered to  come  out  to  China.  Moreover,  none  of  the 
missionaries  of  these  societies  come  at  the  commission 
of  their  sovereigns,  nor  are  they  animated  by  any 
other  motive  than  to  obey  the  last  command  of  Jesus, 
who  bade  all  His  followers  without  fail  to  preach 
the  religion  far  and  wide,  and  thus  fully  attest  the 
sincerity  of  their  faith  and  love.  Refusing  to  do  this, 
though  members  of  the  society.  He  could  not  recognize 
them  as  of  the  highest  character." 

j\Tr.  Brooks  condemns  the  missionaries  for  their 
hostility  to  ancestral  worship,  their  contempt  for  Chi- 
nese superstitions  like  fun^Q^shni,  or  geomancy,  the  se- 
clusion and  secrecy  of  their  work,  and  their  protec- 
tion of  their  converts.  As  to  ancestor  worship,  a  few 
missionaries  plead  for  toleration,  but  the  great  ma- 
jority believe  that  the  rites  of  worship  are  idolatrous, 
though  at  the  same  time  they  appreciate  the  immense 
value  of  the  spirit  of  filial  piety,  and  endeavour  to 
preserve  what  is  not  idolatrous  in  it.  As  to  local 
geomantic  prejudices,  perhaps  headstrong  and 
thoughtless  men  have  sometimes  acted  unwisely  (can 


140       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Ivir.  JJrooks  give  instances?);  but  the  missionary  is 
the  last  person  to  view  the  animosity  of  the  people 
with  indifference.  He  wants  to  gain  a  hospitable  en- 
trance and  to  conciliate  the  people,  and  succeeds  in 
doing  so.  "  To  the  credit  of  the  missionaries,"  says 
Mr.  Michie,  who  denies  the  spontaneous  friendliness 
of  the  people  to  missionaries,  which  no  one  asserts, 
"  it  must  be  said  that  wherever  they  settle  they  gain 
the  affection  of  many  of  the  natives."  As  to  the  se- 
crecy of  Christian  work,  Mr.  Brooks  is  referring  evi- 
dently to  Roman  Catholic  missions,  as  he  singles  out 
"  especially  the  secrecy  of  the  confessional."  I  shall 
not  speak  of  this,  save  to  say  that  Protestant  churches, 
schools  and  hospitals  are  ever  open  to  inspection,  and 
invite  the  fullest  scrutiny.  As  to  the  protection  of 
converts,  Mr.  Brooks  charges  that  they  come  usually 
from  the  lower  classes,  that  they  are  dishonest  debtors 
who  want  protection  from  Chinese  courts.  The  mis- 
sionary "  fights  their  legal  battles  for  them,  supplying 
them  with  money  and  advice,  and  securing  for  them 
a  sort  of  consular  protection  by  means  of  which  their 
suits  are  transferred  from  Chinese  to  foreign  courts." 
This  question  of  the  protection  of  converts  is  to  many 
missionaries  a  difficult  one.  Some  will  not  touch  the 
lawsuits  of  native  converts  at  all.  Others  will  inter- 
fere only  in  cases  of  persecution  because  of  their  re- 
ligion, while  still  others  insist  that  these  are  just 
the  cases  in  which  there  should  be  no  interference. 
That  there  is  possibility  of  abuse  here,  all  missionaries 
admit.  One  of  their  most  difficult  tasks  is  to  sift  the 
motives  of  inquirers,  in  order  to  refuse  those  who 
want  to  join  the  Church  for  the  sake  of  such  help. 
The  practice  of  missionaries  is  not  uniform  as  yet, 
but  the  principle  on  which  all  Protestant  missions  act 
is  to  avoid  interference  as  far  as  they  can  possibly 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   141 

do  so,  and  to  exclude  this  political  element  from  the 
Church.  This  is  a  point  on  which  they  part  widely 
from  the  Roman  Catholics.  They  flatly  refused  to  ac- 
cept the  privileges  secured  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
missionaries  by  the  French  Minister  in  1899,  enlarg- 
ing their  political  influence  and  prescribing  certain 
rights  of  visit  and  communication  between  CathoHc 
missionaries  and  provincial  officials,  which  the  latter 
had  previously  refused.  As  the  bishops  of  the  An- 
glican Communion  in  China  wrote  to  Mr.  Conger, 
"  We  have  no  wish  to  complicate  our  spiritual  respon- 
sibilities by  the  assumption  of  political  rights  and  du- 
ties, such  as  have  been  conceded  to  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic hierarchy."  Mr.  Brooks's  contemptuous  opinion 
of  the  character  of  the  converts  has  been  sufficiently 
belied  by  the  heroism  with  which  scores,  perhaps  hun- 
dreds, of  them  have  met  death  without  denying  their 
faith,  when  a  little  of  that  hypocrisy  which,  according 
to  Mr.  Brooks,  brought  them  into  the  Church,  might 
have  saved  them  in  their  time  of  trial. 

For  this  time  of  trial,  Mr.  Brooks  holds  the  mis- 
sionaries responsible.  "  Of  the  needless  causes  of  irri- 
tation the  missionary  is  easily  the  most  prominent." 
And  he  begins  his  article  by  discrediting  the  plea 
which  the  missionaries  may  make,  that  the  political 
pressure  of  the  West  and  the  seizure  of  territory  and 
"  the  endless  demands  for  concessions  are  the  real 
occasions  of  this  semi-national  uprising."  Well,  let 
some  one  else  than  a  missionary  be  heard.  ]\ir.  Bar- 
rett, formerly  Minister  to  Siam,  is  as  reliable  a  wit- 
ness as  Mr.  Brooks.  "  The  spread  of  Christianity  in 
the  province  of  Shantung,"  he  says.  "  met  with  few 
checks  until  the  commercial  spirit  of  a  great  European 
countrv  apparently  inspired  it  to  seize  a  portion  of 
Chinese  territory  and  a  port  in  this  province. 


142       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Whenever  it  was  my  privilege  to  discuss  anti-foreign 
sentiment  with  intelligent  Chinese,  I  found  invariably 
that  they  placed  the  chief  blame  upon  the  land- 
grabbing  spirit  of  the  European  countries."  Surely 
the  Chinese  Government  itself  is  competent  to  testify 
on  this  point,  and  this  is  its  judgment,  put  forth 
in  an  edict  issued  in  July,  1900:  "  Since  the  first  days 
of  our  dynasty,  all  the  foreigners  coming  to  China 
have  been  invariably  treated  with  liberality,  and, 
coming  down  to  the  eras  of  Taokwang  (1821)  and 
Hienfung  (1851),  we  concluded  with  them  treaties 
of  commerce  and  intercourse  and  conceded  to  them 
the  right  of  propagating  Christianity.  Latterly,  how- 
ever, the  foreigners  have  come  to  encroach  on  our 
territories,  to  rob  us  of  our  good  people  and  to 
plunder  by  force  our  properties,  thus  trampling  under 
their  feet  this  favoured  land  of  ours.  Thus  have  they 
deeply  wronged  us,  and  the  results  have  been  the 
destruction  of  their  churches  and  the  murder  of  their 
missionaries." 

But  it  is  not  right  for  the  sake  of  argument  to 
assent  to  such  a  partial  statement.  A  dozen  things 
enter  into  anti-foreign  feeling  in  China.  Its  sources 
are  found  in  the  Chinese  officials,  their  character  and 
their  education,  in  the  agents  of  foreign  powers,  in 
the  Chinese  people,  in  the  spirit  of  Western  peoples, 
in  foreign  trade  and  its  representatives,  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  in  the  Protestant  missionaries  also, 
and  in  the  history  of  China's  relations  with  the  West. 
It  is  unphilosophical  as  well  as  unfair  to  single  out 
any  one  of  these  and  lay  the  blame  there  alone.  As 
Mr.  Brooks  himself  admits,  "  possibly  most  of  the 
antagonism  is  fundamental."  Assuredly  it  is,  but 
not,  as  he  says,  "  inevitable."  If  missions  had  been 
let  alone,  free  from  the  burden  of  the  political  blun- 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China   143 

ders  and  misdeeds  of  the  West,  and  especially  free 
in  the  case  of  Roman  Catholic  missions  from  the 
patronage  of  P'rance  and  now  of  Germany,  while  the 
mistakes  of  individuals  and  of  the  movement  would 
have  caused  some  difficulty,  this  would  have  been 
easily  lived  down,  and  Christianity  would  have  made 
its  way,  as  it  has  been  making  its  way  in  a  hundred 
fields  in  China,  without  political  support  and  with 
the  increasing  favour  of  the  people. 

"  In  that  case,"  Mr.  Brooks  might  ask  "  why  is  not 
my  suggestion  acceptable,  namely,  that  missionaries 
should  be  divested  of  their  foreign  citizenship,  or  at 
least  of  their  right  of  political  protection?  In  no 
other  way  can  the  political  element  in  their  propa- 
ganda be  destroyed."  That  is  a  question  which  I 
shall  answer,  not  as  one  who  sympathizes  with  mis- 
sions, but  as  a  citizen  of  the  State.  ( i )  Such  a 
course  would  be  treason  to  civilization.  The  mis- 
sionary is  its  forerunner.  He  makes  way  for  light 
and  human  movement.  But  beside  that,  to  remove 
from  him  the  shelter  and  protection  of  Government 
is  to  imperil  every  foreigner.  The  Chinese  does  not 
stop  to  distinguish.  To  put  the  missionary  at  his 
mercy  and  to  acknowledge  the  right  of  the  Chinese 
to  expel  or  exclude  or  assassinate  him  is  to  take  one 
step  toward  gratifying  the  Chinese  desire  to  exclude 
all  foreigners.  (2)  Such  a  course  would  be  criminal. 
It  would  be  the  announcement  to  China  that  the  mis- 
sionary was  fair  game.  "  Steal  his  property,  kill 
him,  outrage  the  women,"  it  would  proclaim.  "  We 
will  not  interfere.  We  leave  them  to  your  barbar- 
ous and  hideous  cruelty  to  do  with  as  you  please." 
If  certain  rights  had  never  been  granted,  to  refuse 
to  grant  them  now  would  be  one  thing.  Having 
been  granted,  to  take  them  away  is  quite  a  different 


144       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

thing.  (3)  j\Ir.  Brooks's  proposal  is  childish  folly. 
He  might  as  sensibly  propose  that  missionaries'  pass- 
ports should  be  viseed  by  the  man  in  the  moon.  This 
country  does  not  denationalize  its  citizens,  least  of 
all  its  best  citizens.  Wherever  in  this  wide  world 
they  go,  they  go  under  the  shelter  of  its  flag,  and 
secure  in  its  certain  protection.  (4)  Such  a  proposal 
is  insolent  effrontery.  The  missionary  is  to  be  de- 
nationalized. There  is  no  provision  for  naturalization 
of  foreigners  in  China.  The  missionary  is  to  be  a 
man  without  a  country.  The  American  harlot  in 
Shanghai  can  fly  the  Stars  and  Stripes  over  her 
brothel.  The  American  saloon-keeper  can  demand  the 
Consul's  protection  in  Tien-Tsin.  But  the  mission- 
ary, teaching,  preaching,  healing  the  sick,  is  to  be 
an  alien  and  a  stranger.  Sydney  Brooks  (I  invent  the 
illustration)  selling  rum  in  China  can  claim  the  rights 
of  his  nationality  and  stand  with  its  whole  power 
behind  him.  Phillips  Brooks  preaching  the  gospel  in 
China  is  an  outcast,  a  political  pariah.  I  find  it  im- 
possible to  suppress  a  feeling  of  stern  indignation  at 
such  an  infamous  and  contemptible  proposal,  infa- 
mous and  contemptible  in  its  view  not  so  much  of 
the  rights  of  missionaries,  as  of  the  duties  of  civilized 
States. 

But  Mr.  Brooks  alleges  that  something  must  be 
done  to  regulate  the  missionary.  "  Until  his  relations 
with  the  Chinese  people  and  the  Chinese  Government 
are  radically  altered,  there  can  be  no  hope  of  settled 
peace."  The  shortest  answer  to  that  is  a  flat  contra- 
diction. Rather  let  the  European  nations  stop  using 
missions  as  the  "  advance  agent  of  annexation."  Let 
them  deal  honourably  and  firmly  with  China.  Let  them 
repent  of  their  folly  in  throwing  away  the  unparalleled 
opportunity     for   peaceful    reformation   presented    in 


The  Iniquity  of  Christian  Missions  in  China     145 

1898,  by  the  Emperor  and  Kang  Yu  Wei — an  op- 
portunity procktced  by  missions — and  atone  by  help- 
ing China  to  break  with  her  iron  conservatism  and 
shake  loose  her  grave  clothes. 

And,  lastly,  and  not  to  follow  Mr.  Brooks  beyond 
this,  even  into  his  curious  appeal  to  the  early  history 
of  Christianity,  the  missionary's  influence,  he  holds, 
is  subversive,  and  his  propaganda  will  have  revolu- 
tionary effects.  In  a  sense,  this  is  not  true.  The  mis- 
sionary's work  is  not  destructive.  It  follows  the  lines 
of  national  character  and  qualification.  Christianity 
has  adapted  itself  to  more  peoples,  and  more  diverse 
peoples,  than  any  other  religion,  and  it  is  compatible 
with  any  orderly  and  righteous  government,  of  what- 
soever form.  It  does  not  attack  the  Chinese  political 
system  or  social  life.  Yet  in  a  sense  the  charge  is 
true.  Christianity  is  a  power  of  upheaval  and  reno- 
vation. It  turns  the  world  upside  down.  It  begets 
wrath  against  injustice,  eagerness  for  liberty,  im- 
patience with  ignorance  and  sloth,  and  passion  for 
progress.  It  has  done  this  in  China.  It  will  con- 
tinue to  do  this  in  China,  whether  in  war  or  in  peace, 
with  the  sympathy  of  the  Christian  nations  or  with 
the  petty  criticism  and  futile  opposition  of  newspaper 
publicists.  That  is  its  mission  in  the  world.  In  his 
naive  language,  the  Prefect  of  Paotingfu  suggests 
that,  if  men  do  not  perceive  it  and  are  not  in  sympathy 
with  it,  they  cannot,  by  the  judgment  of  Jesus,  be 
regarded  "  as  of  the  highest  character." 


XIV 

ARE  THE  MISSIONARIES  RESPONSIBLE  FOR  THE 
TROUBLES  IN  CHINA? 

WHAT  were  the  real  causes  of  the  late 
troubles?  The  view  that  would  lay  the 
whole  responsibility  on  the  missionaries 
seems  on  the  face  of  it  improbable. 
And,  when  we  consider  the  quarters  in  which  this 
view  is  chiefly  advocated,  it  seems  to  be  a  startling 
change  of  opinion.  A  writer  in  The  Japan  Weekly 
Mail  said  of  some  of  the  newspapers  in  Japan  which 
have  been  presenting  this  view,  what  must  have  oc- 
curred to  many  readers  of  papers  at  home : 

"  If  it  be  true  that  '  the  proper  study  of  mankind 
is  man,'  then  somebody  ought  to  devote  a  little  time 
to  the  genus  homo  that  edits  certain  English  papers 
in  the  open  ports  of  Japan.  New  elements  of  logic 
and  mental  philosophy  might  be  added  to  the  general 
store  of  human  knowledge.  In  ordinary  times  these 
papers  represent  the  missionary  as  a  half-educated, 
narrow-minded  bigot,  who  labours  in  vain  to  make  an 
impression  on  these  enlightened  Eastern  people.  And, 
now  that  a  great  anti-foreign  crusade  has  arisen  in 
China,  all  the  trouble  is  laid  at  the  feet  of  the  mis- 
sionary. 

"  Seizure  of  territory  by  foreign  governments, 
forced  railroad  and  mining  concessions,  disturbing 
ancestral  tombs  and  temples  in  the  enlargement  of 
concessions  for  the  foreigners,  opium  importation 
under  protest,  and  other  forced  aggressions  upon  the 
Chinaman,  are  things  he  rather  likes.     You  see,  that 

146 


Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible?       147 

is  what  he  is  there  for,  and  so  he  has  long  ago  reaUzed 
that  his  wealth  and  resources  are  for  the  foreigner 
to  exploit.  So  the  Chinaman  has  long  ago  submitted 
peaceably  to  all  this.  But  these  missionaries  are  a 
continued  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the  empire.  They 
come  along  and  distribute  themselves  throughout  the 
vast  expanse  of  the  country,  say  about  one  to  two 
hundred  thousand  natives,  and  begin  to  translate 
Bibles  and  text-books,  preach  and  proselyte,  build 
schools  and  hospitals,  with  abominable  foreign  money, 
instead  of  demanding  it  of  the  Chinaman,  teach  for- 
eign languages,  foreign  science,  foreign  religion,  and 
foreign  medicine.  This  is  too  much  of  the  foreign 
stuff  for  him,  so  he  rises  up  in  his  wrath  to  put  the 
high-handed  missionary  out,  and,  of  course,  in  his 
unreasoning  madness,  he  makes  all  foreigners  suffer 
alike.  Now  this  is  what  makes  certain  English  editors 
in  Japan  mad.  If  only  the  abominable  missionary 
could  be  driven  out,  and  other  peaceable  foreigners 
left  to  their  railroads  and  mines,  justice  would  be 
perfected. 

"  Now  the  interesting  point  about  all  this  editorial 
wrath  is  the  veiled  compliment  passed  upon  these  half- 
educated  missionaries.  If  a  little  more  than  two  thou- 
sand of  them  can  stir  that  vast,  sluggish  empire  to 
such  a  depth,  what  mighty  men  and  women  they  must 
be !  Their  influence  is  greater  than  they  themselves 
ever  hoped  it  would  be.  And,  as  they  do  not  use 
guns  nor  wear  swords  in  their  daily  work,  it  is  a 
striking  proof  that  the  pen  is  still  mightier  than  the 
sword.  They  have  managed  some  way  to  exert  a 
tremendous  influence  upon  those  teeming  millions. 
Surely  there  must  be  some  mistake  in  thinking  that 
the  missionaries  are  responsible  for  it  all.  Perhaps 
these  editors  have  not  read  the  recent  placards  and 


148       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

edicts  that  have  been  published.  In  these  the  China- 
man himself  counts  the  missionary  as  only  one  of  his 
many  grievances.  I  suspect  he  is  about  right.  These 
editors  have  got  things  mixed  up  in  the  big  stir.  It 
really  concedes  too  much  power  and  influence  to  the 
missionary  to  say  that  he  did  it,  or  even  a  greater 
part  of  it." 

But  this  dismisses  the  question  too  lightly.  The 
missionaries  have  been  working  hard  in  China  for 
many  years.  They  claim  to  have  made  a  deep  im- 
pression. Has  this  impression  been  disturbing  and 
revolutionary?  If  it  has  been  disturbing,  is  this  due 
to  mistaken  practices  on  the  part  of  the  missionaries, 
or  to  the  unavoidable  changes  wrought  in  the  spirit 
of  men  by  Christianity? 

Among  the  mistaken  practices  charged  against  the 
missionaries  are  interference  with  the  authority  of 
Chinese  ofificials,  the  reception  of  bad  characters  into 
the  Church,  neglect  of  Chinese  prejudice  as  to  styles 
and  location  of  buildings,  religious  rites,  and  social 
usages,  indiscriminate  philanthropic  work,  careless- 
ness as  to  Chinese  superstitions,  and  unsympathetic 
criticism  of  Chinese  literature  and  religion.  These  are 
the  general  charges,  as  the  Rev.  Gilbert  Reid  sum- 
marizes them  in  his  sensible  little  book  on  The  Sources 
of  Anti-Foreign  Disturbances  in  China.  Undoubtedly 
individual  missionaries  have  made  mistakes,  and  there 
are  diverse  opinions  among  them  as  to  the  proper 
attitude  on  many  of  these  points.  But  the  same  thing 
is  true  of  missionaries  in  other  countries,  yet  there 
have  been  no  such  anti-foreign  disturbances  in  these 
other  countries,  save  in  India  in  the  Sepoy  rebellion, 
and  no  one  now  charges  missionaries  with  re- 
sponsibility for  that.    Moreover,  the  people  who  could 


Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible  ?       149 

have  been  aroused  to  the  point  of  such  uprising  by 
the  missionaries'  mistakes  in  these  matters  are  few 
and  scattered,  and  are  counterbalanced  by  the  great 
hosts  of  friends  the  missionaries  have  made.  Further 
still,  the  recent  troubles  were  very  distinct  and  easily 
traceable.  They  sprang  from  the  Boxer  uprising  and 
the  support  it  received  in  Peking  from  officials  near 
the  Dowager  Empress.  Neither  the  Boxers  nor  these 
officials  cared  anything  for  the  missionaries  as  such, 
or  for  their  religion.  They  were  in  enmity  against 
all  foreigners,  missionaries  among  them. 

The  real  causes  of  this  trouble  and  of  all  troubles 
in  China,  even  of  the  difficulty  known  as  the  opium 
war,  are  general  and  complex.  ]\Iany  of  them  are 
found  in  the  character  of  the  Chinese  people;  others, 
in  the  character  of  the  Western  people.  The  Chinese 
are  proud,  exclusive,  conservative,  ignorant  from  our 
point  of  view.  On  the  other  hand,  we  are  self-willed, 
aggressive,  with  great  racial  conceit,  and  ignorant 
from  the  Chinese  point  of  view.  The  whole  history 
of  the  relations  of  China  and  the  West  during  the 
century  has  been  a  record  of  clashing  and  friction,  the 
Chinese  hating  the  W'est,  and  wishing  to  be  free 
from  it,  but  unable  to  escape  from  its  encroachment. 
Missions  have  occupied  an  insignificant  place  until 
lately.  The  Opium  and  Arrow  wars  were  fought  for 
commerce.  The  ports  have  been  opened  for  com- 
merce. Diplomac}-  has  worked  for  commerce. 
Yet  the  Chinese  have  resisted  all  the  time,  and  have 
never  lost  hope  of  being  able  to  drive  the  hated  for- 
eigner away.  As  one  of  them,  a  scholar  of  the  Hanlin 
or  highest  degree,  wrote  in  "  the  Ching-Shili-iven, 
a  so-called  Blue  Book  of  China :  "  "  They  must  take 
everythhig  anrl  overcome  everything,  and  nothing 
short  of  this  will  do.    But  we,  the  Chinese  people,  will 


150       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

rise  en  masse,  and  thrust  our  swords  into  the  for- 
eigners* bellies." 

The  fundamental  truth  is  that  the  animosity  of  the 
Chinese  is  political  or  racial  rather  than  religious  or 
social.  Dr.  Alartin,  who  knows  the  people  as  well 
as  any  one,  says,  "  Not  one  attack  on  missionaries  that 
I  ever  heard  of  was  made  by  Buddhists,  Taoists,  or 
any  other  sect,  on  the  ground  of  religious  differences," 
while  many  an  attack  has  been  made  on  others  than 
missionaries  for  other  than  religious  causes.  Some 
years  ago,  a  Hindu  soldier  struck  a  Chinaman  at  the 
British  consulate  in  Chinkiang.  In  half  an  hour  the 
foreign  settlement  was  destroyed.  In  1883,  a  drunken 
Englishman  named  Logan  shot  a  Chinese  boy  at  Can- 
ton. The  result  was  a  riot  which  nearly  destroyed 
Shameen,  the  foreign  quarter,  and  left  bitter  feelings 
which  have  scarcely  yet  died  away.  Many  other  cases 
of  the  same  sort  might  be  cited,  showing  that  the 
Chinese  do  not  single  out  the  missionaries  for  hatred, 
and  that  they  have  had  many  things  to  irritate  them 
that  exceed  in  exasperation  the  quiet  and  conciliatory 
work   of  the  missionaries. 

It  is  sometimes  declared  that  the  Chinese  are  satis- 
fied to  have  the  Western  trader,  and,  of  course,  the 
diplomat  who  must  accompany  him,  but  that  they  do 
not  want  others.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  trade 
which  has  aroused  more  dissatisfaction  than  anything 
else,  perhaps,  save  the  seizure  of  territory.  When 
the  foreign  railroad  was  built  from  Woosung  to 
Shanghai,  it  aroused  such  a  storm  of  indignation  that 
the  viceroy  purchased  it  and  tore  it  up.  Intelligent 
Chinese  to  this  day  cannot  repress  their  indignation 
at  the  conduct  of  Great  Britain  in  forcing  the  opium 
traffic  upon  her.  In  her  treaty  with  the  United  States 
it  is  expressly  stipulated  that  "  citizens  of  the  United 


Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible?      151 

States  shall  not  be  permitted  to  import  opium  into  any 
of  the  open  ports  of  China,  .  .  .  or  to  buy  or 
sell  opium  in  any  of  the  open  ports  of  China."  Some 
people  say  that  the  Chinese  government's  opposition 
to  the  opium  trade  is  not  sincere,  but  that  trade  has 
had  a  large  part  in  increasing  anti-foreign  discontent. 
And  the  foreign  machinery  which  has  been  introduced, 
and  each  improvement  in  transportation,  involves  the 
destruction  of  the  means  of  livelihood  of  thousands. 
The  common  Chinese  idea  is  that  foreigners  get  the 
advantage  of  the  trade  with  them,  and  take  the  money 
out  of  the  country.  And  the  Chinese  notice  the  im- 
morality and  coarseness  of  much  Western  life  which 
they  see.  A  missionary  was  once  speaking  of  the 
superiority  of  Western  morality  in  the  interior  of  Cen- 
tral China,  when  a  man  in  the  crowd  spoke  up  con- 
temptuously and  said,  "  I  have  been  in  Foochow 
Road."  Foochow  Road  is  the  Shanghai  street  of 
brothels  in  the  foreign  concession. 

How  large  a  part  encroachment  by  Western  powers 
on  Chinese  government  and  territory  has  had  in  the 
awakening  of  this  recent  passion  of  anti-foreign  feel- 
ing, any  one  who  knows  China  can  say.  As  the  editor 
of  The  Japan  Mail  puts  it :  "  The  truth  is  that  for  sev- 
eral years  the  Powers  of  Europe  have  been  shaking 
the  Chinese  wasps'  nests  assiduously.  They  imagined 
that  the  insects  had  lost  the  capacity  of  stinging,  and 
that  nothing  would  rouse  them  to  reassert  it.  There 
will  be  some  hurts  before  the  swarm  is  peacefully 
hived  again."  And  Colonel  Denby  has  attributed  the 
recent  crisis  to  the  appropriation  of  land  by  Euro- 
pean governments.  When  Japan  seized  Chinese  ter- 
ritory after  the  China-Japan  war,  the  Chinese  de- 
manded that  Western  powers  should  show  their 
friendship  by  driving  Japan  out.     Now  Russia  has 


152       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

taken  Manchuria  and  Port  Arthur;  Germany,  part  of 
Shantung;  England,  Wei-hai-Wei  and  more  land  at 
Hong  Kong;  France  has  enlarged  her  rights,  and 
province  after  province  has  been  claimed  by  formal 
agreement  as  territory  for  the  exclusive  exploitation 
of  this  pov^er  or  that.  Captain  Brinkley's  figure  of 
speech  might  v^ell  be  reversed.  The  wasps  have  been 
stinging  poor  China,  and  she  has  turned  on  her  tor- 
mentors. 

It  may  be  said  that,  though  all  this  is  true,  the  part 
of  the  missionaries  in  protecting  their  converts  from 
Chinese  courts,  and  in  themselves  appealing  for  gov- 
ernment protection,  has  confirmed  the  Chinese  in  the 
idea  that  they  are  political  marplots,  and  in  some  sense 
agents  of  foreign  powers.  But  any  appeals  for  govern- 
ment protection  have  been  the  effect,  not  the  cause,  of 
the  troubles;  and,  even  so,  the  protection  has  been 
not  so  much  appealed  for  as  authoritatively  extended. 
As  for  the  other  charge  of  protection  of  converts,  it 
is  true  that  there  is  room  for  abuse,  that  missionaries 
have  been  tempted  to  use  influence  with  local  officials 
to  prevent  what  they  believed  to  be  injustice,  and 
that  the  officials,  w^hile  yielding  to  such  influence,  have 
resented  its  exercise.  Just  what  the  limits  of  pro- 
priety and  duty  are  here,  it  is  hard  to  determine.  But 
I  believe  all  Protestant  missionaries  would  join  in 
such  a  statement  as  this  which  the  Central  China  Mis- 
sion of  the  Presbyterian  Church  sent  to  IMinister 
Conger,  in  reply  to  his  inquiry  as  to  whether  he  should 
attempt  to  secure  for  Protestant  missionaries  the  en- 
larged protection  which  the  French  minister  had 
secured  for  the  Roman  Catholic  missionaries :  "  While 
not  wishing  to  lose  the  present  rights  of  friendly  in- 
tercourse with  neighbouring  officials,  we  stroncfly 
deprecate  making  the  Church  subservient   to   political 


Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible  ?      i  53 

ends,  which  will  now  more  than  ever  characterize  the 
work  of  Rome  in  China.  Should  we,  even  with  the 
best  of  motives,  demand  similar  rights,  the  tendency 
would  be  to  make  us  civil  advocates  instead  of  gospel 
ministers,  to  demoralize  the  Christians,  and  to  thwart 
the  spiritual  ends  of  the  gospel.  We  hope,  therefore, 
that  the  United  States  Minister  will  not  claim  for  us 
the  rights  and  prerogatives  recently  accorded  by  this 
edict." 

The  grain  of  truth  which  is  in  the  bushel  of  chaff 
constantly  appearing  in  the  newspapers  on  this 
subject  is  this,  namely,  that  the  missionary  work 
is  producing  a  deep  impression  in  China.  Possibly 
the  perception  of  how  deep  this  impression  is  does 
move  some  keener-sighted  mandarins  to  hostility 
against  the  missionaries,  not  as  foreigners  only,  but 
as  teachers  of  a  new  religion.  As  Mr.  Alexander 
Michie,  a  sharp  critic  of  the  missionaries,  writes :  "  It 
is  possible  that  the  most  constant  source  of  opposition 
to  the  Christian  propaganda  is  one  that  is  never  ex- 
plicitly referred  to  in  speech  or  writing, — the  appre- 
hension of  loss  of  influence  by  the  whole  lettered  and 
official  classes.  In  the  patriarchal  and  theocratic  sys- 
tem under  which  the  empire  is  administered,  the  mag- 
istrates of  all  ranks  in  their  official  capacity,  and  the 
scholars  as  amateurs,  not  only  rule,  but  aspire  to 
regulate  the  people  in  their  various  concerns,  and,  as 
they  must  know  by  instinct  that  the  success  of  the 
propaganda  would  involve  the  solution  of  their  tra- 
ditional tenure  of  influence,  their  implacable  hostility 
to  Christianity  may  be  inferred  without  reference  to 
its  merits  as  a  religion."  On  the  other  hand.  Chris- 
tianity is  building  up  vastly  more  than  it  is  thus  threat- 
ening. What  it  is  threatening  it  is  fast  supplanting- 
with  something  vastlv  better,  while  the  whole  world 


154      Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

has  lost  patience  with  China  because  of  just  that  spirit 
which,  Mr.  Michie  says,  begins  to  perceive  its  most 
deadly  foe,  and  therefore  best  friend  of  China,  in 
Christianity. 

The  gist  of  the  whole  matter  is  this, — for  any  trouble 
in  China  the  missionaries  are  not  responsible.  For 
a  great  deal  of  movement,  of  discussion,  of  change, 
they  are  responsible.  In  any  such  stirring  of  life  there 
is  sure  to  be  waste.  Chips  mark  every  workshop.  But 
the  hostility  which  missions  as  missions  have  aroused, 
either  by  their  mistakes,  by  the  blunders  of  foolish  or 
bad  men,  or  by  the  inevitable  conflict  of  diverse  prin- 
ciples, they  have  atoned  for  by  a  vastly  greater 
amount  of  friendliness  and  intelligence  regarding  the 
West  which  they  have  produced.  They  have  suf- 
fered from  the  use  Germany  made  of  them  in  Shan- 
tung, when  she  demanded  exorbitant  reparation  in 
territory  for  the  murder  of  two  missionaries,  and 
from  their  too  close  connection,  whether  in  fact  or  in 
Chinese  opinion,  with  Western  political  influence.  If 
let  alone  within  their  treaty  privileges,  even  if  these 
had  not  been  rigorously  pressed,  as,  indeed,  they 
have  not  been,  except  spasmodically  (and  some  would 
lay  much  of  the  blame  on  the  complacency  of  Western 
powers  in  this  regard),  missions  would  have  con- 
tinued to  do  their  work  quietly  at  the  roots  of  Chinese 
life  and  nationality,  with  that  certain  but  peaceable 
result  for  which  the  missionaries  are  willing  to  wait 
with  a  patience  which  civilization  cannot  endure.  This 
is  one  of  the  enigmas  of  human  progress.  Why  can- 
not the  forces  which  work  within  be  let  alone  to  do 
their  work,  slowly,  but  with  inevitable  and  natural 
result?  Instead,  the  missionary  must  adjust  his  work 
to  the  merchant's,  the  consul's,  the  soldier's,  and.  tak- 
ing a  dead  tree,  at  the  same  time  produce  the  sap  in  its 


Are  the  Missionaries  Responsible?       155 

veins  and  the  fruit  on  its  branches.  If  any  one  has 
a  right  to  complain  at  the  marring  of  his  work  and 
the  disturbance  of  his  plans,  it  is  the  missionary, — in 
Shantung,  for  example, — who  looks  inland  on  the 
ruins  of  his  hospitals,  churches,  and  schools,  and  then 
coastward  on  the  frowning  walls  of  military  fortifi- 
cations, and  the  embankments  of  railroads,  which  with 
real  violence  rolled  resistlessly  over  the  Chinese 
farmers'  ancient  prejudices  and  vested  rights. 

But  complaints  are  of  no  avail.  There  are  many 
forces  making  the  new  world.  Sometimes  they  clash. 
Sometimes  they  work  harmoniously.  Missions  will 
not  stop  for  trade  or  government,  and  trade  and  gov- 
ernment will  not  change  their  course  for  missions. 
It  is  best  that  all  the  forces  work  together  for  the 
progress  of  the  world,  and  that  they  spend  in  the 
attempt  at  co-operation  the  strength  which,  in  some 
quarters  at  least,  is  so  readily  wasted  in  abuse. 


XV 

THE  SCUTTLE  POLICY  IN  CFilNA 

THE  events  of  the  year  1900  fixed  the  atten- 
tion of  the  whole  world  on  China,  and  for 
many  people  reduced  the  question  of  missions 
to  the  question  of  missions  in  China.  Alis- 
sions  in  China,  many  assumed,  cannot  be,  or  ought  not 
to  be,  carried  on  any  longer;  and  they  easily  make 
the  transition  in  their  thought  and  propose  to  discon- 
tinue their  support  of  missions  generally.  Men  have 
always  acted,  and  will  always  act,  as  much  upon  the 
theory  that  the  less  includes  the  greater  as  on  the 
principle  that  the  greater  includes  the  less.  In  this 
particular  case  the  course  which  many  have  proposed 
to  pursue  overlooks  two  obvious  facts.  One  is,  that 
it  would  cost  more  to  stop  missions  in  China  tempo- 
rarily than  to  carry  them  on,  and  even  their  permanent 
discontinuance  would  for  a  few  years  involve  more 
expense  than  their  maintenance.  The  other  is,  that 
vast  as  is  China,  it  constitutes  but  one  third  of  the 
uncvangelized  world,  and  there  are  about  800.000,000 
human  beings  in  other  lands,  to  whom  the  Church 
is  under  whatever  obligations  to  preach  the  gospel 
have  ever  led  her  to  preach  it  anywhere. 

But  why  are  any  people  assuming  that  missions 
cannot  be,  or  ought  not  to  be,  carried  on  any  longer 
m  China?  Some  have  taken  this  view  because  they 
have  believed  the  missionaries  to  be  responsible  for 
the  troubles.  But  the  missionaries  have  been  in  China 
for  more  than  fifty  years ;  they  have  lived  in  the  treaty 
ports  and  in  the  interior,  and  they  have  not  stirred 
up  any  such  troubles  before.     And  what  excitement 

iS6 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  157 

may  have  grown  out  of  their  presence  has  been  dis- 
proportionately small.  Their  relations  were  never 
easier  or  pleasanter  with  the  Chinese  than  they  were 
at  the  time  of  the  Boxer  outbreak.  On  the  face  of 
it,  the  contention  that  they  caused  the  trouble  is  in- 
credible. On  the  other  hand,  the  political  events  of 
the  last  few  years  were  of  an  altogether  new  sort, 
containing  just  the  incentives  necessary  to  such  a 
national  uprising.  When  these  events  culminated  in 
the  German  seizure  of  a  section  of  Shantung,  "  a  cry 
of  indignation  arose  all  over  China,"  wrote  Dr.  John 
Ross,  "  such  as  I  never  heard  before,"  and  China 
broke  loose  at  last.  This  was  the  explanation  of  Li 
Hung  Chang.  Asked  to  give  his  view  of  the  cause 
of  the  present  outbreak,  an  official  in  China  wrote  to 
The  Independent: 

"  His  excellency  flatly  asserted  that  it  was  due  to 
the  deep-seated  hatred  of  the  Chinese  people  toward 
foreigners.  China  has  been  oppressed,  trampled  upon, 
coerced,  cajoled,  her  territory  taken,  her  usages 
flouted.  Her  people  believe  they  have  both  the  right 
and  the  power  to  act  as  a  sovereign  nation.  Especially 
irritating  was  the  high-handed  course  of  the  Germans 
in  the  occupation  of  Kiao-Chou.  It  was  largely  in 
consequence  of  the  aggression  of  the  Germans  that  the 
Boxer  Society  grew  and  strengthened  in  the  surround- 
ing region,  viz.,  the  province  of  Shantung." 

The  Japan  Mail,  October  6,  1900,  commenting  on 
tliis  declaration,  said :  '*  It  will  be  observed  that  the 
old  viceroy  does  not  say  one  word  about  the  mission- 
ary. We  commend  the  fact  to  the  observation  of  the 
critics  who  undertake  to  expose  the  mainsprings  of 
Chinese  acts."  It  will  be  enough  to  add  two  more 
testimonies  which  are  conclusive.    His  Excellency  Wu 


158       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Ting  Fang,  in  detailing  the  causes  of  the  troubles, 
declared  at  Montclair,  New  Jersey :  "  It  has  been 
said  that  the  missionaries  are  responsible  for  the  pres- 
ent troubles.  I  believe  that  this  charge  against  them 
is  unfair."  And  the  Hon.  John  Goodnow,  United 
States  consul-general  at  Shanghai  has  flatly  asserted 
that  it  is  "  absurd  to  charge  the  missionaries  with  caus- 
ing the  Boxer  war.  They  were  simply  hated  by  the 
Chinese  as  one  part  of  a  great  foreign  element  that 
threatened  to  upset  the  national  institutions." 

But  even  if  one  conclusively  answers  the  ignorant 
charge  that  missionaries  were  responsible  for  the 
troubles,  there  is  a  vague  antagonism  that  refuses  to 
define  itself  clearly  so  that  it  can  be  met.  It  insists 
that  the  missionaries  were  at  least  involved  in  the 
affair,  that  the  situation  would  have  been  less  dis- 
tressing if  they  had  not  been  mixed  up  in  it,  and  that 
when  new  treaties  are  made  their  Hberty  to  venture 
into  danger  should  in  some  way  be  curtailed.  We 
might  as  well  speak  right  out  about  this.  There  have 
been  martyrdoms.  And  martyrdoms  are  anachronisms 
nowadays.  That  a  man  should  go  off  to  Alaska  and 
die  in  attempting  to  get  gold,  or  to  West  Africa  and 
die  of  fever  while  engaged  in  trade — that  is  intelli- 
gible. There  is  money  in  it.  But  to  go  off  for  religion. 
and  to  die  in  trying  to  do  good  to  other  people  for 
nothing — that  is  a  type  of  fanaticism  that  should  be 
dealt  with  by  law  and  prohibited  by  treaty.  There  is 
abroad  still  a  deal  of  the  spirit  which  Mrs.  Browning 
pillories  in  "  A  Tale  of  Villafranca  "  : 

"  Then  sovereigns,  statesmen,  north  and  south, 
Rose  up  in  wrath  and  fear. 
And  cried,  protesting  by  one  mouth, 
What  monster  have  we  here? 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  159 

A  great  deed  at  this  hour  of  day? 
A  great,  just  deed  and  not  for  pay? 
Absurd  or  insincere ! ' 


Even  within  the  Church  there  are  many  who  shrink 
from  the  idea  of  personal  risk  or  danger  and  who 
counsel  caution.  They  would  have  had  the  missionary 
enterprise  withdrawn  from  China  until  missionaries 
can  return  with  perfect  safety.  The  constant  murders 
and  riots  in  America  do  not  seem  to  occur  to  such 
good  people;  and  probably  they  have  not  analyzed 
their  own  instincts,  and  would  shrink  from  some  of 
the  consequences  of  such  an  analysis.  The  burden 
of  sorrow  for  the  loss  of  dear  ones  for  the  moment 
hides  all  else  from  their  view.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  not  those  who  have  lost  dear  ones  who  feel 
this  way.  They  seem  to  have  enough  of  the  spirit 
of  heroism  which  filled  those  who  fell  to  be  incapable 
of  any  weak  and  fearful  course. 

Both  inside  and  outside  of  the  Church,  of  course, 
there  are  many  who  welcome  the  objections  to  mis- 
sions which  have  grown  out  of  the  China  troubles. 
There  are  the  Christians  who  are  always  ready  for 
any  pretext  for  the  escape  of  obligation,  who  declare 
that  they  must  now  discontinue  their  missionary  con- 
tributions— which  they  never  made — and  relinquish 
their  missionary  interest — which  they  never  felt.  And 
there  are  the  forces  always  hostile  to  Christianity. 
Some  of  the  newspapers  have  con  amove  represented 
these,  printing  the  grossest  slanders  of  missionaries 
from  men  who  have  refused  to  come  into  the  open, 
some  of  them  because  their  own  records  were  bad  and 
they  feared  the  light.  It  has  been  an  amazing  revela- 
tion of  the  malignity,  the  venom,  the  malice  of  which 
men  are  capable.  The  very  thought  of  missions,  a  clean 


i6o       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

movement,  an  unselfish  movement,  seemed  to  sting 
these  men  and  newspapers  into  ahnost  uncontrollable 
spite  and  bitterness.  As  Captain  Mahan  has  said 
"  The  best  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a  personal 
devil  is  the  attitude  of  non-Christians  toward  mis- 
sions." 

Now  when  we  calmly  analyze  the  objections  to 
missions  which  are  made  the  ground  of  proposing  the 
discontinuance  of  the  missionary  enterprise  in  China, 
what  do  we  find  them  to  be? 

I.  "  Lives  are  likely  to  be  lost,"  men  say.  And 
when  did  that  become  a  condemnation  of  a  movement  ? 
Christianity  began  with  a  crucifixion  and  was  nour- 
ished by  a  host  of  martyrdoms.  It  has  usually  been 
supposed  that  the  nobility  of  a  cause  was  measured 
by  its  ability  to  command  the  devotion  of  men  even 
unto  death.  Other  things  are  not  condemned  because 
they  cost  life.  A  great  storm  sweeps  Galveston  out  of 
existence,  and  more  than  five  thousand  lives  are  lost 
— more  than  have  been  lost  by  missionary  martyrdom 
since  the  days  of  the  apostles.  Is  it  proposed  to  aban- 
don Galveston?  Not  at  all.  A  new  city  is  rising 
on  the  very  bones  of  the  dead.  The  Congo  Railway 
in  Central  Africa  was  completed  a  few  years  ago.  It 
was  two  hundred  and  thirty  miles  long.  It  cost  $13,- 
000,000  and  four  thousand  men.  Seventeen  human 
lives  were  laid  down  under  every  mile  of  it.  Shall 
men  count  human  life  cheap  enough  for  the  founda- 
tions of  Texas  cities  and  African  railroads,  but  too 
dear  for  the  kingdom  of  God  ?  In  these  very  troubles 
in  China  hundreds  of  soldiers'  lives  have  been  sacri- 
ficed for  national  honour  or  for  trade.  Why  should 
men  refuse  to  give  life  for  the  best  end?  Our  fear 
of  sacrifice  of  life  is  proper  as  a  check  upon  reckless- 
ness or  self-will,  but  pitiable  as  an  excuse  for  refusing 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  i6i 

Christ  what  Christ  did  not  refuse  us.  Life  was  given 
us  for  the  very  purpose  of  being  spent:  not  to  be 
nursed  in  velvet  and  carried  unscarred  and  untested 
out  of  the  world,  but  to  be  used  out  and  up  for  the 
kingdom  of  God.  If  the  kingdom  requires  Hfe  in 
China,  it  is  no  new  thing,  and  Ufe  cannot  be  given 
to  any  nobler  end. 

2.  "  The  Chinese  don't  want  the  missionaries  or 
the  gospel."  But  Christ  was  crucified,  and  He  knew 
He  would  be  crucified  when  He  came.  He  came  to 
His  own  and  they  received  Him  not,  and  He  knew 
they  would  not  receive  Him  before  He  offered  Him- 
self to  them.  The  people  of  our  own  land  do  not  want 
the  gospel  and  its  preachers.  They  would  throng  the 
churches  if  they  did.  If  it  is  wrong  to  carry  it  to 
China  because  it  is  not  asked  for,  it  is  equally  wrong 
to  carry  it  from  house  to  house  here. 

How  can  the  Chinese  be  expected  to  want  the  gospel 
when  they  do  not  know  what  it  is ;  when  their  con- 
tact with  the  West  has  made  them  think  it  is  what  it 
is  not?  The  traders  have  not  commended  it  to  them. 
"  The  general  mass  of  the  people,"  said  Wu  Ting 
Fang,  "  receive  scant  courtesy  at  the  hands  of  the 
foreigners.  At  the  treaty  ports  you  will  often  see 
the  coolies  caned  and  kicked  without  provocation. 
The  beating  of  servants  is  also  a  frequent  occurrence. 
This  embitters  the  natives."  The  armies  of  the  West 
have  not  commended  the  gospel  to  China.  In  the 
town  of  Tungchow  alone,  five  hundred  and  seventy- 
three  high-class  Chinese  women  committed  suicide 
after  the  armies  had  passed  last  summer,  rather  than 
survive  their  shame.  A  trail  of  rapine  and  outrage 
extended  behind  the  troops  from  Peking  to  the  sea. 
Down  to  this  day  the  old  Chinese  families  in  Chefoo, 
in  the  section  occupied  by  the  French  army  in  i860, 


1 62        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

will  not  admit  a  foreigner  across  their  thresholds. 
That  experience  was  enough  for  all  time.  The  nations 
of  the  West  have  not  commended  the  gospel  to  the 
Chinese.  They  have  seized  their  territory  so  that  the 
Chinese  have  now  not  one  first-class  harbour  on  their 
coasts  in  which  to  anchor  their  own  fleets.  They  have 
done  to  China  what  they  would  not  dare  to  do  to  any 
state  capable  of  resisting  insult.  Would  it  be  any 
wonder  if  China  did  not  want  the  religion  of  the 
West?  Would  it  not  be  strange  if  China  should 
ever  want  anything  from  the  West  after  such  treat- 
ment? In  the  light  of  the  past  century  and  the  past 
years,  the  claim  that  civilization  and  commerce  should 
precede  Christianity  seems  so  ludicrous  as  to  be 
absurd.  What  chance  will  Christianity  have  with 
such  predecessors  as  civilization  and  commerce  have 
shown  themselves  to  be  in  China?  The  best  thing 
for  her  and  for  them  is  that  she  should  get  in  ahead 
of  them. 

And  what  evidence  is  there  that  the  Chinese  do  not 
want  Christianity?  The  statement  that  the  mission- 
aries smuggled  their  toleration  clauses  into  the  treaties 
is  utterly  false.  Even  in  the  French  treaty  the  mis- 
sionary clause,  about  which  there  has  been  most  talk, 
was  added,  not  to  the  French,  but  to  the  Chinese  text. 
The  political  associations  of  missions  the  Chinese  have 
dreaded  and  disliked,  but  as  a  religious,  educational, 
and  philanthropic  enterprise,  exactly  what  we  wish  it 
to  be,  the  Chinese  do  not  oppose  its  presence  in  any 
such  way  as  to  justify  the  objection  that  we  are  co- 
ercing them  to  receive  what  they  do  not  want. 

And  are  the  people  who  say  that  missionaries  ought 
not  to  be  allowed  to  go  to  China  because  they  are  not 
wanted  prepared  to  be  consistent?  The  Chinese  did 
not  want  opium.     Were  their  desires  gratified?    They 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  163 

did  not  want  the  Germans  in  Shantung.  They  did  not 
want  their  ports  open  to  trade.  They  did  not  want 
mines  begun.  They  did  not  want  to  give  Formosa  to 
Japan.  Were  they  gratified?  Mr.  Colquhoun's  China 
in  Transformation  J  a  dignified  and  deUberate  book,  is 
a  frank  appeal  for  the  use  of  authority,  of  force  if  need 
be,  to  compel  China  to  open  to  Western  trade.  "  The 
British  merchant,"  he  writes,  "  must  be  supported 
through  thick  and  thin."  But  China  does  not  want  to 
open.  It  is  proposed  by  some  to  curtail  the  rights  of 
missionaries  in  China  because  the  Chinese  do  not  want 
them.  But  no  proposal  is  made  to  exclude  the  Ameri- 
can harlot  who  has  now  penetrated  to  Hankow,  or  the 
American  saloon-keeper  who  is  all  along  the  coast.  Are 
men  and  women  to  be  free  to  flood  China  with  the  vices 
of  the  West,  and  Christians  to  be  barred  from  carrying 
the  virtues  of  the  West  to  counteract  them  ? 

Mr.  Maxim  says  it  is  violating  the  Golden  Rule  to 
send  missionaries  to  China.  Is  it  the  Golden  Rule 
which  led  to  the  fate  of  the  Chinese  women  at  Tung- 
chow,  or  set  up  the  American  brothels  on  the  Yang- 
tse?  The  Golden  Rule  is  not  a  slush  of  immoral  senti- 
ment. It  is  a  principle  of  duty  and  service.  It  requires 
us  to  do  the  right  thing  by  China.  She  is  ignorant  of 
her  own  deepest  need.  That  need  is  the  gospel.  The 
spirit  that  would  evade  the  duty  of  carrying  the  gospel 
to  her,  on  the  ground  that  she  does  not  know  her  need 
of  it,  is  the  spirit  of  the  devil  and  not  of  Christ. 

3.  "  But  missions  are  a  disturbing  force,"  it  is  said. 
"  They  destroy  the  old  faiths  of  these  weaker  people, 
undermine  their  customs,  and  upset  the  world."  But 
for  what  other  purpose  did  Christianity  come  into  the 
world?  Jesus  was  not  attempting  to  introduce  a  per- 
fectly inefficient  and  impotent  thing.  He  came  to  root 
out  the  evil  and  sin  from  individual  hearts  and  to  re- 


164       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

make  them.  The  first  preachers  of  His  gospel  were  so 
far  from  being  innocuous  that  they  were  called  "  the 
men  who  had  turned  the  world  upside  down."  It  is 
most  certainly  true  that  missions  are  a  disturbing  force. 
But  they  are  not  alone  in  this.  They  stir  up  and  make 
peace.  Trade  and  politics  stir  up  and  make  war.  All 
the  wars  which  the  world  has  waged  against  China 
were  for  one  or  both  of  these.  Not  a  battle  has  been 
fought,  nor,  so  far  as  I  know,  a  gun  fired  during  the 
century  by  any  Western  power  for  the  mission  work. 
There  have  been  frightful  massacres  of  missionaries, 
but  missions  did  not  ask  for  revenge,  and  no  govern- 
ment thought  of  inflicting  it.  And  although  missiona- 
ries were  included  in  the  relief  of  Peking,  the  Western 
armies  would  never  have  been  landed  in  China  for 
them.  The  stinging  sarcasm  of  "  An  Ichang  Exile's 
Prayer,"  which  never  issued  from  any  Christian  heart 
is  true  enough  on  that  point. 

"  Because  we  know  not  whose  it  next  shall  be 
To  guard  his  home  against  the  howling  mob, 
To  be  the  victim  of  their  fierce  attack. 
And  then  of  mild,  politely-penned  dispatch. 
To  leave  his  mangled  carcass  in  the  street. 
With  face  uncovered,  while  the  Consul  sits 
In  some  Viceregal  Yam  en,  over  tea, 
Assessing  the  small  value  of  the  dead  ; 
And  last,  because  the  sacredness  of  life 
Rests  on  nice  points  of  quality  and  clothes ; 
Therefore  it  is,  oh !  Lord,  that  now  we  pray, 
When  next  the  rabble  moves  to  deeds  of  blood, 
Let  not  the  pillage  or  the  slaughter  be 
Of  Customs  hireling  or  of  merchant  churl, 
Or  humble  missionary,  glad  to  gain 
Exit  from  trouble  to  a  martyr's  crown, 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  165 

But  rather  grant,  when  the  incited  mob, 

Like  unleashed  bloodhound,  seeks  its  nearest  prey, 

That  it  may  find  obtrusive  on  its  path 

Some  personage  important  to  the  state, 

Or  high  official  representative, 

Some  travelling  faddist,  potent  in  the  press. 

Or  information-gathering  M.  P., 

Some  Anti-Opium  League  authority. 

Aristocratic  trotter  of  the  Globe, 

Or  human  atom  authorized  to  wear 

Gold  lace  upon  the  edges  of  his  clothes. 

Upon  whose  taking  off  there  shall  ensue 

The  steady  tramp  of  solid  infantry 

And  inexpensive  Chinese  funerals ; 

That,  with  the  thunder  of  artillery. 

And  sack  of  goodly  cities,  there  may  be 

Restored  again  that  wholesome  deference. 

That  usual  and  necessary  respect 

Which,  from  the  Asiatic,  is  our  due — 

And  thus,  from  evil,  shall  arise  great  good." 

Missions  have  been  charged  with  arousing  the  people 
and  creating  disturbance,  and  all  the  world  has  listened 
to  this  charge;  but  how  many  have  heard  of  the  riot 
in  Canton  which  followed  the  murder  of  the  Chinese 
boy  by  Logan,  which  threatened  to  destroy  the  whole 
foreign  community?  And  who  knows  of  the  fury 
aroused  in  Chinkiang  by  the  Hindu  policeman?  All 
the  missionaries  in  Canton  and  Chinkiang,  from  the 
opening  of  mission  work  until  the  present  time,  have 
not  created  as  much  disturbance  as  drunken  Logan 
and  the  hotheaded  Sikh,  whom  the  British  Government 
stood  ready  to  protect  to  the  uttermost  from  the  con- 
sequences of  their  acts. 

No  one  is  asking  that  missions  should  be  propagated 


1 66       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

by  force,  or  that  armies  should  descend  on  China  to 
avenge  the  martyrs  of  Christ.  It  is  not  the  business  of 
government  to  carry  on  a  propaganda  of  reUgion.  It 
is  its  business  to  see  that  there  shall  be  no  propaganda 
of  arson  and  assassination.  And  it  is  the  business  of  all 
honest-minded  men  to  make  themselves  acquainted  with 
facts  and  to  read  the  plainest  lesson  of  the  century  in 
China,  that  missions  have  been  the  one  conciliatory  in- 
fluence from  the  West  at  work  in  China,  disturbing 
things,  of  course,  but  winning  friends,  setting  up  har- 
monious relations  and  good  understanding,  and  per- 
suading China  toward  the  things  best  for  herself  and 
best  for  the  world.  On  the  other  hand,  our  trade  and 
our  politics  have  been  irritating  and  disturbing  without 
the  counter-check  of  gentleness,  of  personal  friendship, 
of  sympathetic  knowledge  and  understanding.  They 
have  been  the  real  disturbing  forces  and  their  disturb- 
ance has  resulted  in  the  Arrow  and  Opium  wars,  in  the 
war  in  Tongking,  and  in  the  Boxer  patriotic  uprising. 
Whoever  will  look  into  the  facts  will  have  to  admit  this. 
If  missions  are  to  be  barred  out  of  China  because 
they  are  a  disturbing  force,  on  what  ground  are  the 
revolutionary  and  detested  forces  of  trade  and  politics 
to  be  admitted  to  China?  If  missions  are  to  be  per- 
fectly ineffective  and  puerile,  who  will  want  to  carry 
them  to  any  place?  Is  Christianity  tolerable  only  when 
it  accomplishes  nothing,  when  it  disturbs  no  sin,  no 
vice,  no  evil,  and  introduces  no  virile,  uplifting  power 
of  good  and  transformation?  Christ  sent  it  into  the 
world  to  purify  and  redeem.  And  that  is  what  it  has 
been  doing  in  China  with  an  increasing  adaptiveness 
and  application  to  the  Chinese  mind,  and  what  it  will 
continue  to  do,  with  enlarging  power  among  the  Chi- 
nese people  if  it  can  keep  itself  disentangled  from  the 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  167 

injustice  and  cruelty  and  greed  and  secularism  of  the 
West. 

And  what  a  beautiful  somersault  the  foes  of  mis- 
sions have  taken  in  pressing  this  objection!  A  few 
years  ago  missions  in  China  were  beneath  contempt, 
the  missionary  was  accomplishing  nothing.  He  had 
not  made  the  slightest  impression  on  China.  Now  he 
is  held  u]:)  before  the  world  as  the  monster  who  caused 
all  the  trouble,  and  is  an  object  of  reprobation,  not  for 
his  incapacity,  but  for  his  capacity.  Which  horn  of 
the  dilemma  will  the  critics  take?  If  they  were  right 
a  few  years  ago,  the  missionary  cannot  be  responsible 
for  these  troubles.  If  they  are  right  now,  the  mission- 
ary cannot  be  the  helpless,  incompetent  creature,  in- 
capable of  accomplishing  results,  which  he  was  then 
represented  to  be. 

4.  "  Leave  these  miserable  heathen  to  themselves," 
some  urge,  to  cite  but  one  other  objection.  "  They  are 
not  worthy  of  being  saved."'  "  If  there  is  a  hell,"  one 
man  remarked,  "  let  the  Chinese  go  to  it.  It  is  just 
the  place  they  deserve."  As  we  think  over  the  roll  of 
the  martyrs,  and  imagination  pictures  the  sufferings 
and  indignities  of  mothers  and  little  children,  it  is  hard 
not  to  feel  a  momentary  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of 
just  indignation  which  sternly  condemns  the  wicked- 
ness and  cruelty  of  the  Chinese.  But  have  they  shown 
themselves  any  less  worthy  of  the  grace  of  God  than 
the  people  to  whom  Jesus  came  and  who  crucified  Him 
in  shame  ?  Consider  the  spirit  of  Christ.  "  Father, 
forgive  them,"  He  prayed,  "  they  know  not  what  they 
do."  And  consider  the  provocation  of  the  Chinese.  Of 
course  they  have  done  wrong.  But  they  have  suffered 
wrong,  wrong  upon  wrong.  Those  women  who  com- 
mitted suicide  at  Tungchow  to  escape  their  shame  out- 


l68       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

numbered  four  to  one  all  the  Protestant  missionaries 
murdered  through  the  empire  during  the  troubles. 
When  has  China  met  through  the  years  just  and  hon- 
ourable and  considerate  treatment  from  the  West  ?  Men 
may  ask,  "When  has  she  given  it  to  others?"  But 
that  is  not  an  answer.  Injustice  and  dishonour  do  not 
give  warrant  of  retaliation  in  kind.  Poor  China  knew 
no  better.  The  fact  that  she  knows  no  better  than 
not  to  want  Christianity  is  made  a  reason  for  withhold- 
ing it ;  but  the  fact  that  she  knew  no  better  that  not  to 
want  any  intercourse  with  the  West  was  not  considered 
sufficient  reason  for  the  West's  humouring  her  intoler- 
able whim.  But  it  was  not  necessary  to  deal  with  her 
as  we  have  done,  and,  hating  its  crimes,  we  cannot 
deny  to  the  Boxer  movement  the  character  of  a  pa- 
triotic impulse,  misguided,  but  noble  nevertheless.  It 
is  not  worthy  to  have  driven  China  by  gross  injustice 
to  madness,  and  then  to  make  the  consequence  of  our 
acts  excuse  for  abandoning  her  to  her  own  helpless- 
ness and  insanity.  We  are  under  more,  not  less,  obli- 
gation to  give  Christianity  to  China  because  of  the 
sorrows  of  the  past;  our  sorrows  and  the  sorrows 
of  China. 

In  these  last  troubles  there  were  no  reasons  for 
abandoning  the  work  of  missions  in  China.  The  whole 
afifair  has  but  shown  the  power  of  missions,  the  need  of 
missions,  and  the  divine  place  of  missions,  as  the  one 
force  that  is  properly  destructive  only  of  evil,  and  con- 
structive only  of  good.  Every  native  Christian  who 
has  suffered  for  Christ,  and  every  pang  of  anguish  of 
our  martyrs  in  their  death,  is  a  protest  against  the  sug- 
gestion that  we  should  stop  now  and  withdraw,  is  an 
appeal  to  our  faithfulness  and  devotion.  Instead  of 
shutting  the  doors  to  either  the  country  or  the  people's 
hearts,  these  troubles  opened  them  wider  than  ever. 


The  Scuttle  Policy  in  China  169 

The  war  has  left  bitterness  behind  it,  and  ill-advised 
plans  may  easily  attach  this  to  the  mission  cause.  But 
God,  who  has  allowed  the  horrors  of  the  struggle,  will 
not  allow  them  to  fail  of  bringing  forth  His  result; 
and  that  result,  if  we  are  true  and  of  fearless  hearts, 
scorning  to  use  petty  pretexts  for  the  evasion  of  duty, 
will  be  the  mighty  spread  of  the  gospel  among  a 
mighty  and  noble  people. 


XVI 

HAS  MISSIONARY  WORK  IN  CHINA  BEEN  WORTH 
WHILE  ? 

IT  is  admitted  that  the  missionaries  report  many 
conversions.  Not  to  speak  of  the  Roman  CathoUc 
Christians,  the  communicants  in  Protestant 
churches  in  China  now  exceed  one  hundred  thou- 
sand. And  the  growth  has  been  very  rapid.  In  1876, 
there  were  thirteen  thousand;  in  1886,  twenty-eight 
thousand;  in  1896,  seventy  thousand.  By  1906  there 
will  doubtless  be  more  than  double  seventy  thousand. 
But  what  kind  of  Christians  are  they  ?  Is  it  not  likely 
that  they  are  merely  "  rice  Christians  "  ?  That  ques- 
tion was  more  common  three  years  ago  than  now. 
As  a  missionary  wrote  from  Shanghai  during  the 
last  disturbances,  "  How  sad  all  this  is !  Yet  its 
bright  side  is  the  firmness  of  the  Christians,  and  their 
joy,  some  of  them,  in  being  counted  worthy  to  suffer 
for  the  name  of  Christ.  The  secular  dailies  here 
have  printed  one  or  two  statements  of  the  firmness  of 
converts  even  to  death  that  sounds  the  knell  of  all  talk 
of  rice  Christians."  It  was  silly  talk  before.  No  one 
ever  suspected  the  Chinese  Christians, — while  making 
full  allowance  for  a  somewhat  smaller  proportion  of 
hypocrites  and  formalists  than  would  be  found  in 
the  Christian  Church  in  America, — who  knew  anything 
of  what  they  had  to  face  in  confessing  Christ.  In  the 
mere  matter  of  their  renunciation  of  the  idolatrous 
rites  connected  with  ancestral  worship,  they  have  let 
go  of  what  Dyer  Ball  says  "  scarcely  anything  short 
of  the  miraculous  "  can  force  a  Chinese  to  give  up. 
Scarcely  any  tests  of  Christian  faith  and  life  are 
170 


Has  Work  in  China  Been  Worth  While?    171 

met  by  home  Christians  which  are  not  exceeded  in 
severity  by  the  trials  Chinese  Christians  are  meeting 
constantly  with  joy.  I  met  in  Lien  Chow,  several 
years  ago,  a  Christian  who  had  been  with  the  Rev.  W. 
H.  Lingle  in  a  persecution  in  Hunan,  when  he  was  ar- 
rested, and  threatened  with  the  loss  of  his  inheritance 
unless  he  would  abjure  Christianity.  This  he  re- 
fused to  do,  and  was  firm,  though  he  was  forced 
to  sign  away  his  property,  and  was  nearly  sawn 
asunder.  And  thousands  are  meeting  the  far 
severer  test  of  the  duty  of  a  quiet,  godly 
life.  The  general  judgment  of  the  missionaries 
seems  to  me  to  be  temperate  and  just,  that  in  zeal  and  in 
sincerity  the  native  Christians  are  not  behind,  and  may 
even  claim  a  place  in  advance  of  Christians  at  home. 
"  Few  as  they  may  be  when  all  told,"  says  that 
sharp  critic,  Mr.  Michie,  in  Missionaries  in  China,  "  and 
mixed  as  they  must  be  with  spurious  professors,  it  is 
a  gratifying  fact,  which  cannot  be  gainsaid,  that  Chris- 
tians of  the  truest  type, — men  ready  to  burn  as 
martyrs,  which  is  easy, — and  who  lead  '  helpful  and 
honest '  lives,  which  is  as  hard  as  the  ascent  from 
Avernus,  crown  the  labours  of  missionaries,  and  have 
done  so  from  the  very  beginning.  It  is  thus  shown 
that  the  Christian  religion  is  not  essentially  unadapted 
to  China,  and  that  the  Chinese  character  is  susceptible 
to  its  regenerating  power." 

Times  of  trial  like  the  recent  uprising  develop  these 
qualities  of  fidelity.  Thus  a  woman  missionary  wrote 
from  Soochow :  "  There  is  much  fear  among  the  Chris- 
tians generally,  but  so  far  the  little  flock  here  have 
shown  a  faith  in  God  that  makes  me  realize  once 
more  the  power  of  the  religion  of  Christ  over  the 
minds  of  men.  When  an  old  woman,  but  a  little  over 
a  year  ago  a  heathen,  tells  me  that  it  is  not  needful 


172       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  fear,  but  only  to  believe  in  the  Father  in  heaven, 
and  then  goes  on  with  her  every-day  life,  although  bad 
men  have  stood  in  her  doorway,  and  threatened  to 
burn  and  kill,  I  know  she  has  something  in  her  heart 
which  keeps  her  quiet  and  at  peace."  But  in  the  com- 
mon and  quiet  days  of  missionary  life  such  courage  is 
constantly  required  of  the  Chinese  Christians,  and  is  as 
constantly  displayed.  When  Dr.  Davis,  of  the  Southern 
Presbyterian  Mission  in  Soochow,  was  negotiating  for 
the  land  on  which  the  Mission's  hospital  is  built,  a 
native  preacher,  named  Liu,  "  offered  his  services  to 
act  as  native  '  middleman  '  in  the  purchase.  The  local 
magistrate  was  bitterly  opposed  to  the  foreigners'  ac- 
quiring property,  and  in  a  similar  transaction,  some 
years  ago,  he  revenged  himself  on  the  native  who 
took  part  in  it  by  arresting  him  on  some  false  charge, 
and  throwing  him  into  prison,  where  he  lay  for  several 
years.  This  was  the  probable  fate  of  Mr.  Liu.  But 
he  did  not  hesitate  on  that  account.  He  went  out  and 
found  an  old  man,  and  initiated  him  into  the  care  of 
his  home,  so  that  the  old  man  could  manage  things 
for  him  during  the  indefinite  time  that  he  expected  to 
lie  in  prison." 

The  missionaries  in  China  are  doing  this  good  thing : 
they  are  creating  character  in  thousands  of  men  and 
women  who  have  been  lifted,  by  faith  in  Christ,  out 
of  weak,  sinful  lives  into  lives  of  uprightness  and 
power.  "  I  can  witness,"  says  Dr.  Corbett  of  Chefoo, 
whose  testimony  is  worth  more  than  that  of  all  the 
globe-trotters  in  the  world,  "  in  behalf  of  hundreds,  to 
their  childlike  faith  in  the  power  and  willingness  of 
God  to  fulfil  every  promise  in  the  Bible;  to  their 
unshaken  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer,  their  love  of 
the  Scriptures,  and  their  honest  and  faithful  effort 
to  live  blameless  lives." 


Has  Work  In  China  Been  Worth  While  ?   173 

This  is  sufficient  to  justify  the  work  of  missionaries 
in  China.  Each  saved  Hfe  is  in  itself  adequate  vindi- 
cation of  the  missionary  movement.  After  Miss  Singh, 
a  converted  Hindu  woman,  had  spoken  at  the  Ecu- 
menical Conference,  President  Harrison  rose  to  speak, 
and  began  by  saying,  "  If  I  had  had  a  million  dollars, 
and  had  invested  it  all  in  missions,  and  this  was  the 
only  result,  I  should  not  want  my  money  back."  And 
there  are  hundreds  of  men  and  women  in  China  whose 
ennobled  lives  would  be  return  for  all  the  expenditure 
on  missions  in  China  from  the  days  of  Robert  Mor- 
rison. 

But  great  as  these  results  are,  they  are  but  a  part 
of  the  good  the  missionaries  have  been  doing  in  China. 
As  Li  Hung  Chang  said  in  New  York,  when  he  was 
here  in  1896,  in  an  address  to  the  representatives  of 
the  missionary  societies :  "  As  for  intellect,  you  have 
started  numerous  educational  establishments  which 
have  served  as  the  best  means  to  enable  our  country- 
men to  acquire  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  modern  arts 
and  sciences  of  the  West.  As  for  the  material  part 
of  our  constitution,  your  societies  have  started  hos- 
pitals and  dispensaries  to  save,  not  only  the  souls,  but 
also  the  bodies,  of  our  countrymen.  I  have  also  to 
add  that,  in  the  time  of  famine  in  some  of  the  prov- 
inces, you  have  done  your  best  to  the  greatest  number 
of  the  sufferers  to  keep  their  bodies  and  souls  to- 
gether." 

Very  few  people  in  the  West  know  of  the  vast 
work  the  missionaries  have  done  in  education.  In 
1896,  the  Protestant  missions  reported  972  primary 
schools,  114  secondary  schools,  and  46  colleges  and 
training-schools,  with  a  total  of  21,353  pupils.  These 
figures  have  greatly  increased  since.  These  schools 
have  been  the  only  schools   for   girls,  and  the  best 


174       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

schools  for  young  men,  in  China.  The  missionaries 
at  work  in  them  have  produced  the  educational  litera- 
ture for  the  whole  of  China.  Let  any  one  who  has 
been  disposed  to  depreciate  missions  examine  the  cata- 
logue of  educational  pubhcations  of  the  great  Presby- 
terian Mission  Press  in  Shanghai,  and  he  will  open  his 
eyes  in  astonishment.  There  could  scarcely  be  any 
true  education  in  China  if  it  were  not  for  the  mission- 
aries; and  when,  in  1898,  the  favourable  attitude  of 
the  Emperor  encouraged  Western  learning,  and  schools 
were  opened  all  over  the  empire,  the  Chinese  at  once 
turned  to  the  missionaries  for  help,  while  the  Press  in 
Shanghai  was  not  able  to  meet  the  demand  for  its 
publications.  And  it  is  not  in  Western  learning  only 
that  the  missionaries  have  benefited  China.  They 
have  taught  many  Chinese  their  own  language  and 
literature.  As  one  of  the  best  educated  Chinese 
preachers,  Mr.  Yen,  said  at  Shanghai,  in  1890,  "  As 
the  Chinese  are  more  ungrammatical  speakers  of 
their  own  language  than  the  average  Western  mis- 
sionary, so  are  they  worse  teachers  of  it  than  the 
latter." 

The  medical  work,  which  Li  Hung  Chang  also 
praised,  and  in  which  he  showed  himself  a  firm  be- 
liever when  he  erected  a  hospital  at  Tientsin  for  John 
Kenneth  Mackenzie,  is  scarcely  less  extensive  than 
the  educational.  In  1896,  there  were,  in  connection 
with  the  Protestant  missions,  seventy-one  hospitals  and 
a  hundred  and  eleven  dispensaries,  with  more  than 
half  a  million  visits  of  patients  reported.  And  this 
work  in  spite  of  all  the  slanders  which  have  attacked 
it, — such  as  that  the  doctors  used  babies'  eyes,  and 
were  guilty  of  nameless  enormities, — the  Chinese  have 
appreciated,  as  the  way  they  crowd  the  hospitals  and 
dispensaries  indicates.    The  North  China  Daily  News 


Has  Work  in  China  Been  Worth  While  ?    175 

in  July,  1900,  said  of  Manchuria,  "  For  years  past 
foreigners  travelling  in  the  interior  have  only  had  to 
name  the  hospital  to  find  a  warm  reception  from  the 
people.  They  might  know  little  about  the  mission- 
ary's creed,  and  might  care  less,  but  over  the  philan- 
thropic work  of  the  hospitals  they  waxed  eloquent. 
They  have  taken  advantage  of  them  at  the  rate  of  hun- 
dreds every  day ;  they  have  subscribed  liberally  to 
their  support ;  they  have  erected  memorial  tablets  in 
their  praise;  and  they  mourn  with  the  missionaries 
over  the  ruined  hospitals  to-day." 

And  the  immense  work  of  relief  done  by  the  mis- 
sionaries, often  at  the  cost  of  life  in  times  of  famine, 
Chinese  officials  and  Western  consuls  have  unstintedly 
praised.  When  Albert  Whiting  died  in  Shansi,  a  vic- 
tim of  famine  fever,  in  1878,  the  governor  of  the 
province  offered  to  pay  the  expense  of  sending  his 
body  to  America,  and,  when  that  was  declined,  met 
the  expense  of  the  burial  and  provided  the  place,  while 
some  who  could  not  be  restrained  knelt  down  to  wor- 
ship at  the  martyr's  grave.  At  the  close  of  the  famine 
of  1878,  the  Tsung  li  Yamen  officially  thanked  the 
missionary  societies,  and  Mr.  Walter  C.  Hillier,  of 
the  British  consular  service,  spoke  thus  of  the  mis- 
sionaries who  had  engaged  in  the  work,  of  relief: 

"  Lives  which  bear  every  mark  of  transparent  sim- 
plicity and  truthfulness,  that  will  stand  the  test  of  the 
severest  scrutiny,  must  in  the  end  have  their  due 
effect.  It  seems  presumptuous  to  offer  a  tribute  of 
praise  to  men  whose  literal  interpretation  of  the  calls 
of  duty  have  placed  them  almost  beyond  the  reach  of 
popular  commendation,  but  perhaps  I  may  be  allowed 
to  say  that  any  one  who  has  seen  the  lives  that  these 
men  are  leading  cannot  fail  to  feel  proud  of  being" 
able  to  claim  them  as  countrymen  of  his  own." 


176        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

I  shall  add,  out  of  many,  one  other  testimony  of  a 
member  of  the  British  civil  service,  J.  Dyer  Ball, 
Esq.,  of  Hong  Kong : 

"  Had  Protestant  missionaries  done  nothing  else 
in  China  than  prepare  and  publish  the  books  issued 
by  them  in  Chinese ;  start  the  schools ;  w^ritten  the 
books  in  English,  containing  narratives  of  their  own 
travels,  and  accounts  of  the  natives,  and  of  their 
religious  customs  and  manners;  translated  native 
works ;  instructed  the  youth  of  both  sexes,  and  founded 
hospitals  and  dispensaries, — had  these,  we  say,  been 
the  only  things  accomplished  by  Protestant  mission- 
aries, they  would  have  done  a  noble  work ;  but  added 
to  all  these  more  secular  labours  is  the  directly  re- 
ligious work  of  preaching  the  gospel,  tract  and  Bible 
distribution,  visiting,  gathering  together  the  converts, 
etc.,  all  of  which,  though  less  appreciated  by  the  gen- 
eral mercantile  community  of  China,  has  been  as  sig- 
nally sucessful  as  the  other  class  of  undertakings." 

Some  people  may  ask  why,  if  missions  are  doing 
so  much,  they  share  in  the  anti-foreign  dislike  of  the 
Chinese.  In  one  sense  their  very  success  displeases 
some.  It  displeases  the  literati,  whose  whole  capital 
consists  of  their  Confucian  education. — an  education 
which  civilization  and  progress  will  render  worthless. 
It  displeases  others  also.  As  C.  T.  Gardner,  Esq., 
for  many  years  in  the  British  service,  and  at  the  time 
of  the  publication  of  his  pamphlet,  The  Missionary 
Question  in  China,  Consul-General  in  Seoul,  wrote : 
"  Another  cause  of  dislike  is  jealousy.  The  Christian 
education  of  the  children  of  converts  undoubtedly 
produces  greater  intelligence  and  a  higher  moral  tone 
than  the  Chinese  non-Christian  education.  The  conse- 
quence is  that  Christian  Chinese  are  now  obtaining  a 
success  in  life  far  greater  than  the  non-Christians  of 


Has  Work  in  China  Been  Worth  While  ?   177 

the  same  class.  There  is  hardly  a^high  official  in  the 
empire  who  has  not  one  or  two  Christians  in  his  em- 
ploy as  confidential  servants.  .  .  .  This  cause 
of  dislike  can  only  be  diminished  by  improving  the 
education  of  non-Christian  Chinese." 

And  the  missionaries  are  eager  to  give  to  all  what 
has  proved  of  such  value  to  some.  They  work  in 
the  hope  of  the  enlightenment  of  all  China.  As  the 
London  Times  declares : 

"  The  good  effected  by  missionaries  is  by  no  means 
to  be  measured  by  a  list  of  conversions.  They  are 
the  true  pioneers  of  civilization.  It  is  to  them  we 
have  to  look  to  carry  the  reputation  of  foreigners  into 
the  heart  of  the  country ;  and  it  is  on  their  wisdom, 
justice,  and  power  of  sympathy,  that  the  Renaissance 
of  China  very  largely  depends." 

It  is  no  easy  work  which  is  thus  laid  on  the  mis- 
sionaries, but  they  are  discharging  it.  As  Colonel 
Denby  once  told  a  reporter : 

"  The  missionaries  are  scattered  all  over  China. 
Wherever  they  have  gone  civilization  has  found  a  foot- 
ing. They  are  teaching  the  people  of  China  to  read 
and  write ;  they  are  teaching  the  women  to  sew  and 
the  men  to  saw.  Their  influence  is  spreading  all  the 
time.  Remember  that  a  merchant  cannot  go  to  the 
interior  of  China.  He  can  establish  himself  in  one 
of  the  thirty-five  treaty  ports,  and  buy  property,  but 
his  business  in  the  interior  must  be  done  through 
native  merchants.  Our  knowledge  of  China  is  con- 
fined largely  to  the  coast,  though  we  know  something 
of  the  interior  from  travellers ;  but  the  missionary 
goes  everywhere." 

And  the  civilization  which  profits  by  the  mission- 
aries' work  seldom  thinks  of  the  cost  of  it.  Mr. 
Micliie  says : 


178        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

"  Those  who  have  no  experience  of  the  deadening 
contact  of  masses  of  the  poorer  Chinese,  whose  ideas, 
when  they  have  any,  run  in  opposite  directions  to 
ours,  whose  horizon  is  Hmited  by  their  neighbour's 
rice  field,  and  whose  chronology  is  marked  by  recur- 
ring famines,  can  scarcely  conceive  the  sacrifice  which 
is  made  of  cultured  men  and  women  in  consigning 
them  to  a  long  life  amid  such  depressing  surroundings. 
And  it  lends  emphasis  to  the  sacrifice,  in  common  esti- 
mation, to  consider  that  in  numerous  instances  the 
exile  has  divested  himself  of  wealth  and  social  posi- 
tion, as  well  as  other  ingredients  which  the  world 
deems  most  necessary  to  the  cup  of  happiness.  The 
physical  discomforts,  fatigues,  and  privations  inci- 
dental to  a  missionary  career,  appear  to  be  the  least 
part  of  what  has  to  be  endured  in  the  interior  of 
China;  and  it  is  indeed  wonderful  that  so  many  of 
the  missionaries  come  through  the  ordeal  with  seem- 
ingly unimpaired  intellectual  vitality,  and  with  the 
moral  sense  so  little  blunted." 

The  object  lesson  of  such  imcomplaining  heroism 
— heroism  which  only  too  often  ends  in  wrecked  health 
and  broken  spirit — is  a  good  to  the  Church  at  home, 
from  the  work  of  missionaries  in  China. 

As  part  of  their  work,  the  missionaries  have 
fought  the  opium  curse.  Li  Hung  Chang  praises 
them  for  that : 

**  The  opium-smoking,  being  a  great  curse  to  the 
Chinese  population,  your  societies  have  tried  your 
best,  not  only  as  anti-opium  societies,  but  to  afford 
the  best  means  to  stop  the  craving  for  the  opium ;  and 
also  vou  receive  none  as  your  converts  who  are  opium- 
smokers." 

They  have  condemned  foot-binding,  and  succeeded 
in  creating  sentiment  against  it.     They  have  made  it 


Has  Work  in  China  Been  Worth  While?    179 

possible  for  the  blind  of  China  to  read,  and  have  estab- 
lished the  only  schools  for  deaf  and  dumb,  and  the 
only  asylum  for  the  insane.  They  have  refuges 
for  lepers,  homes  for  orphans,  and  they  rescue 
blind  girls  from  their  natural  destiny  in  houses  of 
shame. 

How  deeply  the  mission  work  has  sunk  its  roots  in 
China,  and  how  powerful  and  pervading  is  its  influ- 
ence, a  thousand  little  things  show,  and  now  and  then 
a  great  thing  like  the  Reform  Movement  of  1898. 
Let  any  one  learn  the  inner  story  of  that  remarkable 
movement,  which  was  in  no  small  measure  a  result  of 
missions,  and  think  of  what  it  was  ready  and  eager 
to  do  for  China  peaceably,  and  then  meditate  upon 
the  trail  of  war  from  Tientsin  to  Peking,  the  smoking 
cities,  the  slaughtered  men,  the  jealousy  and  friction 
of  the  Powers,  the  dim  prospect  of  distant  order  and 
harmonious  intercourse,  tinged  with  the  inevitably 
bitter  memories  of  this  needless  struggle, — needless, 
for  it  has  come  because  the  West  turned  away  from 
the  most  hopeful  opportunity  ever  presented  in  China, 
— and  he  will  gain  new  respect  for  the  work  of  mis- 
sions and  for  the  missionary  method  of  reforming 
states. 

"Are  the  missionaries  doing  any  good  in  China?" 
Is  there  any  other  certain  way  of  doing  China  good? 
"  Previous  to  experience,"  says  one  who  knows  the 
Chinese  perhaps  as  well  as  any  Western  man  has  ever 
known  them,  the  Rev.  Arthur  H.  Smith.  D.D.,  "  it 
W'ould  have  seemed  tolerably  safe  to  predict  that  it 
would  be  easier  to  modify  the  social  condition 
of  a  non-Christian  community  than  to  modify 
its  religious  condition.  But,  as  the  result  of  ex- 
perience, it  appears  that  it  is  easier  to  introduce  Chris- 
tianity than  to  alter  the  type  of  the  current  civilization, 


l8o       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  that  the  only  permanently  successful  way  to  alter 
that  civilization  is  first  to  introduce  Christianity,  after 
which,  little  by  little,  '  all  these  things  shall  be  added 
unto  you.'  " 


XVII 

MINISTER  WU'S  CONFUCIAN  PROPAGANDA* 

HIS  Excellency,  Wu  Ting  Fang,  the  Chinese 
Minister  to  the  United  States,  has  rendered 
a  real  service  in  some  of  the  addresses  he 
has  made  to  the  American  people.  In  his 
speech  before  the  American  Academy  of  Po- 
litical and  Social  Science  in  Philadelphia  on  Nov.  19, 
1900,  repeated  in  substance  before  the  Outlook  Club 
in  Montclair  on  Dec.  28,  1900,  he  set  forth  a  just  and 
temperate  account  of  the  causes  of  the  last  troubles 
in  China  and  of  anti-foreign  feeling  there,  that  is,  as 
just  an  account  as  could  reasonably  be  expected  from 
a  Chinese,  especially  one  whose  duty  it  was  to  defend 
his  country.  Not  content  with  such  political  addresses, 
Dr.  Wu  ventured  further  in  an  address  before 
the  Ethical  Culture  Society  in  New  York,  and  at- 
tempted to  prove  the  superiority  of  Confucianism  and 
Confucian  institutions  over  Christianity  and  Chris- 
tian institutions.  We  must  believe  that  here,  too,  he 
has  rendered  a  great  service,  though  not,  perhaps, 
of  the  kind  he  intended.  He  has  drawn  some  sharp 
distinctions  between  Confucianism  and  Christianity. 
There  has  been  danger  that  these  would  be  lost  sight 
of.  The  temper  of  our  day  has  been  to  slur  over 
such  distinctions,  to  hold  that  these  systems  are  not 
radically  different,  that  Christianity  has  nothing  so 
new  or  different  to  give  as  to  justify  our  sending  mis- 
sionaries to  China.  The  Chinese  Minister  says  that 
there  are  great  and  radical  differences,  that  Christi- 

*  The  quotations  from  Minister  Wu's  speeches  are  taken 
from  the  New  York  Sun,  with  the  exception  of  the  quotation 
from  the  Pittsburg  address. 

181 


1 82       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

anity  is  a  religion,  and  Confucianism  is  not;  that 
Christianity  is  affirmative,  and  Confucianism  agnostic; 
that  Christianity  regards  man  as  an  immortal  soul, 
and  Confucianism  regards  him  as  a  "  social  institu- 
tion ;  "  that  Christianity  speaks  of  a  world  above  this 
and  a  world  after  it,  and  Confucianism  knows  neither. 
Christian  missions  and  Christianity  everywhere  have 
been  anxious  that  these  lines  of  cleavage  should  not 
be  obscured.  Wu  Ting  Fang  has  rendered  a  great 
service  in  sharply  defining  them. 

Doubtless  it  has  been  a  great  surprise  to  many  that 
His  Excellency  should  so  clearly  perceive  the  dif- 
ference between  Confucianism  and  Christianity  and 
yet  prefer  Confucianism,  as  he  declares  he  deliberately 
does.  In  a  speech  to  the  Lotus  Club  on  Dec.  15,  1900, 
he  said :  "  From  my  boyhood  I  have  been  taught  and 
I  have  learned  in  the  classics  of  Confucius  that  the 
words  we  speak  should  be  sincere."  We  must  believe 
that  he  is  sincere  in  that  preference,  but  granting  that 
he  is,  we  have  a  fresh  and  discouraging  evidence  of 
the  tenacity  and  permanence  of  Chinese  character.  If 
Minister  Wu,  with  all  his  advantages  of  study  and 
comparison,  still  conscientiously  prefers  the  civiliza- 
tion and  morality  of  Confucianism,  what  hope  is  there 
for  his  country,  whose  hundreds  of  thousands  of  man- 
darins have  no  acquaintance  whatever  with  un-Con- 
fucian  ideas  and  institutions? 

As  to  whether  it  was  courteous  for  the  Chinese  Min- 
ister to  depreciate  the  Christian  religion,  which  he 
certainly  did,  whatever  his  subsequent  disavowals,  it 
is  needless  to  enter  into  discussion.  An  American 
Minister  in  Constantinople  would  scarcely  have  spoken 
so  of  Mohammedanism  in  contrast  with  Christianity, 
or  in  St.  Petersburg,  of  the  Greek  Church  in  contrast 
with  Protestantism. 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda    183 

As  to  the  substance  of  Minister  Wu's  address  before 
the  Ethical  Culture  Society,  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking,  instead  of  angering  Christians  it  should  only 
make  them  sad.  It  would  seem  that  the  Chinese  Min- 
ister has  known  few  of  them,  and  none  of  the  sort 
many  of  us  know,  who  truly  love  their  enemies  and 
seek  not  their  own  will;  and  the  revelation  of  what 
he  does  not  know  of  Christianity  is  equalled  by  his 
revelation  of  what  he  does  know  of  Confucianism. 
On  that  side  his  address  might  be  issued  almost  as 
a  missionary  tract.  If  this  is  what  Minister  Wu  has 
found  Confucianism  to  be,  then  it  is  just  the  sort 
of  thing  that  Christians  are  called  to  replace  with 
Christianity. 

For  His  Excellency  has  demonstrated  that  all  the 
teaching  of  Confucius  about  sincerity  has  left  the 
Chinese  people  radically  insincere.  Indeed,  Confucius 
himself  broke  an  oath,  practised  deception  and  praised 
it  in  Mang  Che-fan,  and  though  the  classics  have  al- 
ways exalted  sincerity,  there  is  no  more  vivid  char- 
acteristic of  the  Chinese  Government  than  deceit  ful- 
ness, or  of  the  Confucian-trained  man  than  a  certain 
strain  of  unreality  and  disingenuousness.  Dr.  Wu 
openly  describes  this  trait  of  the  Chinese  with  apparent 
unconsciousness  of  how  it  appears  to  the  Western 
mind.  Though  holding  the  Confucian  view,  he  says : 
"  The  Chinese  are  always  a  practical  people,  and  as 
we  are  not  sure  what  religion  is  exactly  right,  we 
employ  representatives  of  all  sorts,  so  that  if  one  does 
not  do  the  thing  (i.e.,  secure  happiness  and  peace  for 
the  future  life)  the  other  will."  This  is  a  correct 
representation  of  Chinese  custom,  and  it  involves  a 
notion  of  sincerity  totally  different  from  ours.  For 
the  true  Confucianist,  as  Dr.  Wu  points  out,  must 
regard  these  religions,  Buddhism  and  Taoism,  as  su- 


184       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

perstitions;  and  yet  he  resorts  to  them.  Resorting 
to  a  religion  in  which  a  man  does  not  beUeve,  we  call 
not  sincerity  but  hypocrisy.  It  is  part  of  the  naive 
disingenuousness  of  Confucianism  that  it  does  not 
feel  this  in  the  least. 

This  unreality  marks  all  Chinese  institutions.  It  is  a 
land  of  formalism  and  ritualism  gone  to  seed,  the  forms 
and  rites  covering  little  or  no  reality.  The  theatrical- 
ism  of  the  Government,  the  stilted  untruthfulness  of 
the  Imperial  Gaccttc,  the  rotten  insincerity  of  the 
whole  Chinese  system,  go  on  unperceived  apparently 
by  the  people,  who  have  kept  up  the  show  for  so  many 
centuries  that  it  has  ceased  almost  to  be  a  show  to 
them,  and  they  have  become  sincerely  insincere. 

Nothing  else  than  this  could  have  been  expected  of 
Confucianism.  It  was  pure  externalism  and  never 
contained  the  sanctions  that  could  save  propriety  from 
sinking  into  hollow  mummery.  As  Dr.  Wu  said :  "  It 
is  not  really  a  religion  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the 
word ;  "  and  then  he  ventured  into  a  pitiful  definition 
of  religion  that  reveals  exactly  the  spirit  and  influ- 
ence of  Confucianism.  "  Religion,"  he  says,  "  tends 
to  bring  a  man  back  from  error  by  holding  out  the 
prospect  of  everlasting  punishment  for  wickedness, 
and  everlasting  happiness  for  the  good."  And  Min- 
ister Wu  condemns  this  conception  and  approves  of 
Confucianism  because  it  does  not  contain  it.  "  Con- 
fucianism is  not  as  fascinating  as  some  other  doctrines, 
because  it  is  lacking  in  that  element  of  a  promised 
reward."  It  is  true  that  the  consistent  Confucianists 
have  not  cherished  the  idea  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments in  a  future  life,  but  the  consistent  Confucianist 
in  this  regard  is  hard  to  find.  And  as  for  this  present 
life,  Confucianism  has  been  reduced  to  a  matter  of 
rewards,   and   only   those   study    Confucius    who   are 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda    185 

seeking  rewards.  With  no  rewards,  a  motive  Dr.  Wu 
despises,  who  would  take  the  Confucian  examinations 
in  China?  In  Korea,  when  the  rewards  stopped  the 
examinations  died.  And  Chang  Chih  Tung  asks  in 
China's  Only  Hope:  "  Suppose  schools  were  es- 
tablished and  there  was  no  official  power  whatever 
which  would  confer  rank  on  the  graduates  or  grant 
their  stipends ;  with  no  hope  of  rank  or  stipend,  who 
would  enter  any  institution  established  on  this  basis  ?  " 
Is  Dr.  Wu  altogether  accurate  in  representing  Con- 
fucianism as  a  system  of  purer  and  more  selfless  mo- 
tives than  prevail  in  Christianity?  It  is  the  very  mer- 
cenariness,  the  self-centredness  of  Confucianism  which 
determines  his  view  of  religion.  A  matter  of  rewards 
and  punishments !  "  By  religion,"  said  Cardinal  New- 
man, "  I  mean  the  knowledge  of  God,  of  His  will,  and 
of  our  duties  toward  Him."  But  Confucianism  does  not 
know,  and  Minister  Wu  has  not  learned  from  it,  of 
such  a  religion  of  fellowship  with  a  good  and  loving 
God.  The  squalour  and  poverty  of  his  notion  of  re- 
ligion is  a  revelation  of  the  impotence  and  emptiness 
of  Confucianism. 

Indeed,  he  frankly  calls  Confucianism  agnosticism, 
and  suggests  that  the  world  is  drifting  to  it.  But 
the  absolute  immobility  of  Confucianism  would  cut  it 
off  from  any  relationship  to  our  Western  agnosticism, 
whose  evolutionary  principles  are  the  very  antipodes 
of  the  stagnant  spirit  of  Confucius.  Nevertheless,  it 
is  agnosticism,  a  materialistic  agnosticism,  knowing 
neither  spirit  nor  faith.  Dr.  Wu  quotes  the  familiar 
passage  from  the  Analects:  "  Kee  Leo  asked  about 
serving  the  spirits  of  the  dead,  and  the  master  said, 
'  While  you  are  not  able  to  serve  men,  how  can  you 
serve  their  spirits?'  The  disciple  added,  'I  venture 
to  ask  about  death,'  and  he  was  answered,  '  While  you 


1 86       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

do  not  know  life,  how  can  you  know  about  death  ? '  " 
But  Confucius  was  not  a  sincere  agnostic.  "  He  sacri- 
ficed to  the  dead  as  if  they  were  present,"  we  are  told 
in  the  Analects;  '"  he  sacrificed  to  the  spirits  as 
if  the  spirits  were  present."  And  the  insincerity  of  Con- 
fucius is,  as  Dr.  Wu  has  confessed,  the  insincerity  of 
all  Confucianists.  They  are  agnostic  in  their  philos- 
ophy, and  the  most  fearful  spirit  worshippers  in  actual 
hfe.  They  have  never  satisfied  themselves  in  Con- 
fucianism, Their  architecture  is  a  confession  of  their 
inability  to  be  agnostics.  In  hfe  and  in  death  they 
preserve  still  the  elementary  beliefs  that  preceded  Con- 
fucianism, that  he  did  not  dare  to  deny  in  his  teaching, 
and  that  survive  in  undiminished  power  to  this  day. 
The  acceptance  by  the  closest  advisers  of  the  Em- 
press, the  most  orthodox  Confucianists  in  China,  of 
the  claim  of  the  Bo'xers,  who  also  were  good  though 
ignorant  Confucianists,  to  the  possession  of  super- 
natural powers,  was  but  one  out  of  a  million  evidences 
of  the  irrepressible  religiousness  of  the  human  spirit, 
even  in  China.  Confucianism  is  agnostic,  but  the 
Chinese  are  gnostics.  They  are  Confucian  through 
and  through  in  their  self-complacency,  their  opera 
bouffe  dignity,  their  external  propriety,  and  they  are 
not  Confucianists  at  all  in  their  childish  beliefs  in  a 
world  of  spirits,  a  heaven  and  earth  full  of  beings  in 
which  they  believe  the  more  because  they  know  noth- 
ing about  them.  Even  the  Chinese  heart,  which  has 
been  fed  for  twenty-five  hundred  years  on  agnostic 
husks,  has  not  been  able  to  live  on  them. 

Moreover,  as  Confucianism  supplies  the  Chinese 
with  their  ethics  and  as  Confucianism  is  agnostic, 
however  superstition  may  have  met  the  cravings  of 
their  hearts,  the  people  are  without  any  adequate  basis 
for  their  morality.     It  is  devoid  of  sanctions.     It  is  a 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda     187 

system  of  external  behaviour  resting  on  a  basis  of 
pure  naturalism.  ]\lan  is,  as  Dr.  Wu  pointed  out, 
a  "  social  institution,"  not  a  moral  personality.  It 
would  be  foolish  to  hold  that  a  system  of  ethics  can- 
not be  grounded  in  human  relations,  such  as  the  five 
relations  of  Confucius,  sovereign  and  subject,  parent 
and  child,  elder  and  younger  brother,  husband  and 
wife,  friend  and  friend.  The  Chinese  society  has 
rested  for  two  millenniums  on  such  a  ground,  and  if 
undisturbed  from  without  would  have  continued  for 
centuries.  But  this  is  not  a  sufficient  ground,  and 
"  the  full  strength  of  ethics  is  not  discerned  until  the 
very  principle  of  duty  itself  is  felt  to  be  grounded  in 
the  eternal  reality  of  the  holy  and  gracious  God." 
The  Christian  contention  is  that  naturalistic  ethics  are 
not  practicable.  They  will  answer  for  certain  pur- 
poses and  in  certain  limits,  but  there  is  no  regenerat- 
ing power  in  them,  and  they  will  not  preserve  all 
human  interests,  not  to  speak  of  divine. 

And  this  introduces  us  to  Minister  Wu's  dominant 
contention.  He  holds  precisely  the  opposite  view,  that 
Christianity  is  impracticable  and  Confucianism  prac- 
ticable. He  declared  the  Christian  standards  "  too 
high  for  frail  humanity,"  and  added :  "  The  hold  that 
Confucianism  has  on  China  is  due  to  its  practicability. 
Confucius  himself  stood  as  an  example  of  what  he 
desired  man  should  try  to  be."  This  view  is  itself 
thoroughly  Confucian.  The  first  question  it  raises 
is  the  question  not  of  right  but  of  practicability.  Con- 
fucianism says.  That  is  right  which  is  practicable. 
Christianity  says,  That  is  practicable  which  is  right. 
What  is  the  end  of  the  Confucian  view?  Sheer  law- 
lessness. "  Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which 
is  in  heaven,  is  perfect,"  says  Christ.  "  Be  as  perfect 
as  is  practicable,"  says  Confucianism,  acording  to  Dr. 


l88       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Wu.  That  is  equivalent  to  saying,  "  Do  as  you  please." 
All  absolute  standards  go.  The  reign  of  personal  ca- 
price sets  in.  Practicability  as  the  determining  ele- 
ment in  ethics  lands  us  in  chaos.  In  appeahng  to  it, 
as  between  Christianity  and  Confucianism,  the  Chi- 
nese Minister  sets  up  a  standard  which  Confucius 
himself  did  not  warrant.  With  all  his  defects,  he  was 
too  worthy  to  relinquish  in  this  way  absolute  measure- 
ments and  judgments. 

And  on  his  own  ground,  as  he  has  chosen  it,  we 
may  not  hesitate  to  meet  His  Excellency.  Are  the 
ideals  of  Confucianism  better  than  the  ideals  of  Chris- 
tianity? It  recognizes  no  relation  to  a  living  God. 
It  relegates  all  contact  with  heaven  to  an  annual  act 
of  the  Emperor.  It  ignores  the  plainest  facts  of  moral 
character.  It  has  no  serious  idea  of  life  and  no  deeper 
insight  at  all.  "  The  Chinaman  is  mentally  colour- 
blind to  the  spiritual  in  all  forms."  It  cannot  explain 
death.  It  holds  truth  of  light  account.  It  presupposes 
and  tolerates  polygamy  and  sanctions  polytheism.  It 
confounds  ethics  with  external  ceremonies  and  reduces 
social  life  to  tyranny.  It  rises  at  the  highest  no  higher 
than  the  worship  of  genius,  the  deification  of  man.  It 
speaks  no  word  of  fellowship  or  progress,  ignores  the 
deepest  cravings  of  the  human  spirit,  and  in  one  of 
its  most  famous  utterances,  the  Sacred  Edict  of 
Kang-hsi,  sneers  at  Buddhism  because,  passing  by  the 
mere  externalism  of  life,  it  concerns  itself  "  simply 
with  the  heart."  Instead  of  being  practicable,  its  ideals 
of  sagely  perfection  and  of  proper  conduct  are  utterly 
unreal  and  impossible.  The  touch  of  actuality  and 
human  movement  is  crumbling  them  into  burlesques 
before  our  eyes. 

We  can  challenge  Minister  Wu  to  compare  the  at- 
tainments of  the  Confucian  ideals  by  the  Chinese  with 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda     189 

our  attainment  of  the  Christian  ideals.  He  points 
to  Confucius  as  one  who  was  "  an  example  of  what 
he  desired  man  should  try  to  be."  This  was 
not  Confucius's  view  of  himself.  "  In  letters  I 
am  perhaps  equal  to  other  men,"  he  says  in  the  Ana- 
lects; "  but  the  character  of  the  superior  man,  carry- 
ing out  in  his  conduct  what  he  professes,  is  what  I 
have  not  yet  attained  to."  And  again :  "  In  the  way 
of  the  superior  man  there  are  four  things,  to  not  one 
of  which  have  I  as  yet  attained.  To  serve  my  father 
as  I  would  require  my  son  to  serve  me ;  to  this  I  have 
not  attained.  To  serve  my  prince  as  I  would  require 
my  minister  to  serve  me;  to  this  I  have  not  attained. 
To  serve  my  elder  brother  as  I  would  require  my 
younger  brother  to  serve  me ;  to  this  I  have  not  at- 
tained. To  set  the  example  in  behaving  to  a  friend 
as  I  would  require  him  to  behave  to  me ;  to  this  I  have 
not  attained."  Confucius  himself  appears  to  have 
found  his  system  not  altogether  practicable.  If  the 
master  fails,  what  shall  the  disciple  do?  Christ  ex- 
emplified His  doctrine  in  His  own  life. 

And  the  Chinese  people  have  not  found  Confucian- 
ism practicable.  "  I  do  not  claim,  of  course,"  said  Dr. 
Wu  at  Pittsburg  on  Nov.  i,  1900,  "  that  the  Chinese, 
as  a  people,  always  live  up  to  this  high  standard  of 
morality.  They  are  only  human,  and  sometimes  allow 
themselves  to  be  carried  away  by  their  passions  to 
fearful  excesses."  The  high  maxims  of  Confucius 
have  never  redeemed  the  life  of  the  Chinese.  There 
is  more  gambling,  poverty,  disorder  and  vice  in  China 
than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world.  And  though 
Confucius  in  the  Doctrine  of  the  Mean  inculcated 
"  indulgent  treatment  of  men  from  a  distance,"  China 
has  been  the  most  bitterlv  anti-foreign  land  in  the 
world,  and  those  Chinese  have  been  most  bigoted  and 


190        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cruel  and  merciless  who  were  most  devoted  to  Con- 
fucius. Indisputable  evidence  has  brought  the  re- 
sponsibility for  the  riots,  outrages  and  assaults  against 
foreigners  home  to  the  door  of  the  literati,  while  Sir 
Robert  Hart  simply  states  a  notorious  fact  in  calhng 
the  Boxer  movement  "  the  product  of  official  inspira- 
tion," that  is,  Confucian  inspiration.  Minister  Wu 
justly  bewails  the  fate  of  his  country,  and  looks  with 
honest  horror  on  the  outrages  of  Western  troops  in 
Northern  China.  We  sympathize  with  his  abhorrence. 
But  the  outrages  they  committed  all  Christendom 
condemns  and  no  Christian  participates  in  them.  The 
outrages  the  Boxes  committed  Confucianism  applauded 
and  its  leaders  instigated  and  abetted. 

Minister  Wu  selects  the  saying  of  Christ,  "  Love 
thine  enemies,"  proclaims  it  "  too  high  for  frail  hu- 
manity," points  out  "  the  vast  gulf  between  profession 
and  practice  "  among  Christians  in  the  matter  of  for- 
giveness and  revenge,  and  contrasts  the  teaching  of 
Confucius,  "  Requite  kindness  with  kindness  and  in- 
justice with  justice."  But  this  is  precisely  where  Con- 
fucianism has  failed  and  Christianity  succeeded.  The 
Chinese  cherish  on  Confucius's  authority  the  right  of 
blood  revenge.  Sir  John  Davis  and  Legge  have  both 
called  attention  to  this  as  one  of  the  objectionable 
principles  of  Confucius.  The  disciple  Tsze-hea  asked 
him  :  "  What  course  is  to  be  pursued  in  the  case  of  the 
murder  of  a  father  or  mother?"  He  replied:  "The 
son  must  sleep  upon  a  matting  of  grass,  with  his 
shield  for  his  pillow,  he  must  decline  to  take  office ; 
he  must  not  live  under  the  same  heaven  with  the  slayer. 
When  he  meets  him  in  the  market  place  or  in  the 
court,  he  must  have  his  weapon  ready  to  strike  him." 
With  all  our  shortcoming's.  Christians  bv  the  thousand 
have  learned  to  forgive  and  to  love  their  enemies. 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda     191 

And  even  if  our  ideals  are  above  us  still,  as  they  are, 
this  but  proves  that  they  are  worthy  ideals.  When 
we  attain  them  we  shall  need  new  ones  farther  on. 
Ideals  that  are  on  a  level  with  men's  lusts  are  no 
ideals  at  all.  Ideals  that  are  not  above  us  are  beneath 
our  contempt.  And  though  there  is  a  gulf  between 
Christian  teaching  and  Christian  practice,  it  is  a  nar- 
rowing gulf,  while  the  chasm  between  Confucian 
teaching  and  Confucian  practice  is  a  widening  chasm. 
We  slip  and  fall,  but  Christianity  has  in  it  the  power 
of  self-purification,  and  it  recovers  itself  and  climbs 
on  again.  But  Confucianism  is  dead.  Minister  Wu 
says  it  is  alive.  Yet  it  is  slowly  fading  out  of  Japan 
and  Korea,  and  while  its  naturalism  and  agnosticism 
will  continue  as  they  have  ever  been  in  the  world, 
what  was  distinctive  in  it  will  lose  its  hold  and  drop 
back  into  that  great  tomb  in  which  for  centuries  the 
Chinese  people  have  been  content  to  live. 

For  there  is  something  better  for  them  than  Con- 
fucianism. We  cannot  believe  that  His  Excellency 
was  quite  sincere  when  he  said :  "  I  tell  you  Confucian- 
ism is  the  highest  form  of  civilization  and  morality." 
Von  Mollendorf,  in  The  Family  Law  of  the  Chi- 
nese, says :  "  The  pafria  potestas  over  children, 
whether  legitimate  or  adopted,  is  unlimited.  The 
father  (or  after  his  death  the  mother)  can  do  with 
them  as  he  likes ;  he  may  not  only  chastise,  but  even 
sell,  expose  or  kill  them  if  he  likes.  The  latter  occurs 
often  enough,  especially  with  girls,  if  the  family  is  too 
poor  to  bring  them  up."  Minister  Wu  knows  doubt- 
less of  many  baby  markets  where  such  children  are 
sold  for  a  few  cents.  The  legislation  of  any  land  with 
reference  to  the  child  is  a  good  test  of  its  civilization 
and  morality.  The  land  with  least  human  pity,  with- 
out an  asylum  for  the  insane,  with  hospitals  for  dogs 


192       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  cows  and  donkeys  but  none  for  men,  with  no 
prisons  of  reform,  no  institutions  for  the  bhnd,  save 
brothels  for  little  blind  girls,  a  tarn  of  polygamy  in 
its  imperial  palace,  with  its  best  educated  and  most 
patriotic  class,  according  to  Leroy  Beaulieu  and  every 
other  observer,  "  the  most  obstinately  retrogressive ;  " 
a  land,  as  Chang  Chih  Tung  says,  "  almost  irreclaim- 
ably  stupid  and  not  awake,"  whose  women  are  without 
rights  and  whose  rulers — let  us  make  honourable  ex- 
ceptions— without  righteousness ;  which  murders  its 
reformers  and  whose  intellectual  life  ceased  centuries 
ago  and  knows  neither  a  divine  spirit  nor  a  human 
soul — is  this  the  land  which  displays  the  highest  form 
of  civilization  and  morality? 

It  is  a  form  of  civilization  and  morality.  It  has 
lasted  many  centuries,  but  it  has  broken  down  at  last. 
And  the  moment  at  which  it  has  demonstrated  its 
political  puerility  and  witnessed  a  mighty  holocaust  of 
Christian  martyrs  slaughtered  in  its  name  was  scarcely 
the  propitious  moment  for  the  official  representative 
of  the  Chinese  Government  to  undertake  its  propaga- 
tion in  America.  The  last  thing  any  Christian  desires 
to  do,  however,  is  to  speak  unkindly  either  of  Min- 
ister Wu  or  of  his  great  people.  We  only  marvel 
that  he  is  able  to  deceive  himself  with  the  thought  that 
any  people  can  have  a  true  and  worthy  life  with  a 
philosophy  materialistic  toward  this  present  life  and 
agnostic  toward  the  life  to  come.  No  nation  has  ever 
lived  nobly  on  that  philosophy.  No  nation  ever  can. 
China  will  discover  this,  and  Minister  Wu  will  do 
a  real  man's  work  in  the  world  and  serve  China  better 
by  trying  to  lead  his  countrymen  toward  the  day  than 
by  preaching  here  Confucius's  sterile  and  pompous 
gospel  of  ignorance  and  night. 

And  I  venture  to  wonder  whether  it  is  not  fair  to 


Minister  Wu's  Confucian  Propaganda     193 

ask,  Which  Wu  Ting  Fang  is  right,  the  Wu  Ting 
Fang  now  preaching  Confucianism  in  America  or  the 
same  Wu  Ting  Fang  when  years  ago  he  was  baptized 
as  a  Christian  behever  in  Hong  Kong? 


XVIII 

A  ROMAN  CATHOLIC  VIEW  OF  MISSIONS  IN 
CHINA 

THE  missions  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  heathen  lands  are  more  or  less  shrouded  in 
mystery.  It  is  difficult  to  get  full  and  reliable 
reports  of  the  number  of  missionaries,  of  the 
number  of  converts  and  native  workers,  and  of  the 
work  itself.  It  is  easier  to  obtain  such  information, 
to  the  extent  to  which  it  is  obtainable,  in  other  lan- 
guages than  English.  There  are  enlightening  accounts 
of  the  travels  of  Catholic  missionaries,  like  Abbe  Hue's 
books,  and  some  invaluable  records  of  missionary  de- 
votion and  success,  like  Father  Wallay's  history  of 
the  "  Missions  fitrangeres,"  but  little  is  obtainable  in 
English  descriptive  of  the  present  extent  and  methods 
of  Catholic  missionary  work.  And  the  traveller  in 
Asia,  at  least,  who  tries  to  inform  himself  of  the  char- 
acter and  plans  of  the  work,  while  meeting  sometimes 
those  who  will  lay  it  bare  before  him  frankly,  especi- 
ally if  he  can  speak  French  or  can  appear  as  a  Catholic 
sympathizer,  will  still  often  meet  with  a  secretiveness 
which  makes  him  anxious  for  fuller  and  more  specific 
knowledge. 

Another  China,  described  as  "  Notes  on  the  Celestial 
Empire  as  Viewed  by  a  Catholic  Bishop,"  meets  such 
a  want  as  this.  Monseigneur  Reynaud,  its  author,  is 
vicar  apostolic  of  the  district  of  Che-Kiang,  with  resi- 
dence at  Ningpo,  and  though  his  notes  were  written  in 
French  they  have  been  translated  and  published  in 
English  by  a  Catholic  hand,  with  some  free  adaptation, 
it  is  charged  by  some,  to  English  minds.    Monseigneur 

194 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    195 

Raynaud's  view  of  the  Chinese,  his  account  of  the 
Catholic  missionaries  and  their  work,  and  his  opinion 
of  the  work  of  the  Protestant  missionaries,  are  all  of 
the  greatest  interest. 

It  is  a  very  kindly  and  charitable  view  of  Chinese 
character  which  appears  in  this  book.  The  Chinese 
are  spoken  of  as  "  those  generous  and  upright  beings 
who,  led  away  by  error,  are  yet  sighing  for  happiness." 
If  it  is  characteristic  of  the  Catholic  missionaries,  it 
does  them  credit.  Monseigneur  Reynaud  points  out 
the  significance  of  the  fact  that  the  Chinese  language 
is  such  a  rich  language  in  moral  maxims,  and  that 
while  the  life  of  the  people  is  quite  inconsistent  with 
the  ethics  of  their  maxims,  there  is  yet  in  the  latter 
a  real  preparation  for  the  teaching  of  Christianity. 
There  have  been  those  who  regarded  the  language  and 
these  beautiful  sayings  as  the  very  inventions  of  the 
devil  to  obstruct  the  acceptance  of  the  gospel.  But 
the  Bishop  says : 

"  The  daily  language  of  the  Chinese  is  full  of  prover- 
bial sayings,  which  are  in  constant  use  among  them, 
praising  virtue  and  condemning  vice.  Some  of  them 
point  out  the  vanity  of  worldly  honours,  the  contempt 
of  riches,  the  avoidance  of  pleasures  that  entail  so 
much  misery,  the  horror  of  injustice,  the  efifects  of 
anger  and  impatience,  the  folly  of  pride,  the  iniquity 
of  slander,  the  shortness  of  life,  and  so  on.  Others 
inculcate  love  of  virtue,  practice  of  good  works,  esteem 
of  wisdom,  patience  in  troubles,  forgetfulness  of  in- 
juries, fidelity,  gratitude,  humility,  and  good  example. 
The  proverbs  having  reference  to  charity  are  particu- 
larly expressive  and  beautiful,  and  it  is  to  be  desired 
that  our  missionaries  should  make  great  use  in  their 
sermons  and  instructions  of  these  axioms,  in  which 


196       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

may  be  heard  distant  echoes  of  passages  in  the  gospel. 
The  language  of  an  entire  race  cannot 
be  one  universal  falsehood,  and  these  moral  notions, 
so  often  repeated,  must  be  esteemed  by  individuals 
even  if  they  do  not  always  follow  them ;  and  such  clear 
ideas  of  good  and  evil  can  surely  be  no  obstacle  to 
their  conversion." 

Of  the  people  Monseigneur  Reynaud  uses  such  ad- 
jectives as  intelligent,  skilful,  sober,  hard-working,  pa- 
tient, persevering,  enduring,  very  subtle,  keen, 
prompt,  precocious,  artistic,  expert  in  farming,  simple, 
practical,  frugal,  thrifty ;  but  he  must  speak  also  of 
their  "  incredible  ingenuity  at  deception.  Calm  and 
good-tempered,  when  not  roused  to  fury  or  panic,  the 
Chinese  take  everything  as  it  comes ;  and  men  as  they 
are,  and  actuated  by  their  philosophy  of  practical  com- 
mon sense,  they  are  not  disposed  to  be  ruffled  by  disap- 
pointments. This  apparent  apathy  concealing  powers 
of  much  passive  resistance,  renders  the  Chinese  dan- 
gerous sophists,  for  possessing  full  control  of  their 
feelings,  they  are  not  carried  away  by  heat  of  discus- 
sion; they  avoid  all  weak  points  in  their  arguments, 
and  discuss  the  most  burning  topics  with  a  blandness 
and  subtle  irony  peculiar  to  themselves.  According  to 
the  Chinese,  well-bred  people,  if  they  do  disagree, 
should  explain  themselves  calmly  and  politely,  while 
invective  and  threats  (at  which,  however,  the  Celestials 
can  be  great  adepts),  are  considered  to  indicate  want 
of  dignity  and  strength  of  mind,  besides  being  a  sure 
sign  of  defeat." 

National  spirit,  Bishop  Reynaud  thinks,  as  under- 
stood by  the  Chinese,  exists  chiefly  among  the  literati, 
while  "  among  the  common  people  no  thought  is  given 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    197 

to  patriotism,"  and  though  possessing  a  certain  degree 
of  courage,  it  seems  to  be  more  negative  than  active. 
Of  the  position  of  women  in  China,  he  says : 

"  The  Chinese  have  the  utmost  respect  for  the  pro- 
prieties of  social  intercourse,  in  which  great  reserve 
is  maintained  between  men  and  women.  It  is  really 
surprising  to  see  such  strictness  and  decorum,  and  ab- 
sence of  familiarity  in  the  manners  of  a  heathen  na- 
tion. The  women  are  remarkably  modest  in  all  their 
actions ;  they  rarely  speak  to  the  men,  and  are  satisfied 
with  the  society  of  people  of  their  own  sex,  even  when 
there  are  family  gatherings ;  and,  as  it  has  already  been 
observed,  the  Chinese  are  scandalized  by  the  very 
different  manners  of  the  Europeans,  which,  in 
their  eyes,  appear  to  be  exceedingly  frivolous  and  in- 
decorous." 

At  the  same  time  "  Protestant  evidence,  but  none  the 
less  valuable  on  that  account,"  is  cited  to  the  effect 
that— 

"  The  state  of  degradation  to  which  heathenism  has 
brought  the  women  and  girls  of  China  is  truly  pitiable. 
The  higher  classes  are  secluded  in  their  own  homes, 
just  as  in  India,  and  spend  miserable,  aimless  lives, 
almost  their  only  occupation  being  smoking,  drinking 
tea,  and  embroidering  tiny  shoes  for  their  poor  crip- 
pled feet.  You  rarely  find  one  among  them  who  can 
read,  or  is  in  any  way  educated." 

Of  the  mandarins  and  literati,  Monseigneur  Rey- 
naud  has  no  kind  words  to  say.  "  There  are  two 
distinct  Chinas,  the  official  China,  composed  of 
literati    and    mandarins,    and    the    China    of    private 


1 98       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

individuals.  The  first  deserves  all  the  reproaches 
heaped  upon  it.  ,  .  .  Although  the  Chinese 
code  of  lav^  is  remarkable  for  its  wisdom  and 
its  equity,  it  is  a  mere  collection  of  beautiful  maxims, 
as  all  legislation  is  left  to  the  sv^eet  will  of  the  corrupt 
mandarins,  who  make  a  regular  traffic  of  justice. 
.  The  Chinese,  while  stoically  enduring 
these  exactions,  heartily  despise  the  mandarins  and 
their  satellites,  who  are  really  responsible  for  the 
abuses  that  so  forcibly  strike  Europeans." 

And  most  of  the  obstacles  to  the  conversion  of  the 
Chinese  are  attributed  to  "  the  hatred  of  the  man- 
darins, the  calumnies  of  the  literati,  and  family  perse- 
cution." 

On  the  native  priests  as  severe  judgment  is  passed 
as  upon  the  mandarins.  "  The  bonzes,  as  I  know  them 
in  the  province  of  Che-Kiang,  ought  not  to  inspire  us 
with  any  serious  apprehensions.  Their  bad  reputation 
injures  their  influence  and  their  laziness  interferes  with 
their  zeal.  Their  vocation  is  simply  a  trade,  and  they 
live  by  the  altar,  as  a  workman  lives  by  his  tools.  Their 
services  are  indeed  believed  in  and  paid  for,  but  their 
conduct  wins  them  much  contempt." 

This  is  the  opinion  expressed  also  by  such  fair 
writers  as  Eitel,  who  says :  The  priests  are  mostly 
recruited  from  the  lowest  classes,  and  one  finds 
among  them  frequently  the  most  wretched  specimens 
of  humanity,  more  devoted  to  opium  smoking 
than  any  other  class  in  China.  They  have  no 
intellectual  tastes,  they  have  centuries  ago  ceased 
to  cultivate  the  study  of  Sanskrit,  they  know  next 
to  nothing  about  the  history  of  their  own  religion, 
living  together  mostly  in  idleness,  and  occasionally  go- 
ing out  to  earn  some  money  by  reading  litanies  for  the 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  In  China    199 

dead,  or  acting  as  exorcists  and  sorcerers  or  physi- 
cians. No  community  of  interest,  no  ties  of  social  life, 
no  object  of  generous  ambition,  beyond  the  satisfying 
of  those  wants  which  bind  them  to  the  cloister,  di- 
versify the  monotonous  current  of  their  daily  life. 
And  Ball  also  declares :  "  The  priests  are  ignorant, 
low  and  immoral,  addicted  to  opium,  despised  by  the 
people,  held  up  to  contempt  and  ridicule,  and  the  gibe 
and  joke  of  the  populace." 

An  interesting  chapter  is  given  to  Chinese  charitable 
institutions,  hospitals,  and  homes  for  animals,  orphan- 
ages, almshouses,  asylums  for  widows,  dispensaries, 
and  homes  for  old  men,  which  is  closed  with  the  true 
paragraph : 

"  Though  it  may  surprise  our  readers  to  hear  of  such 
beneficent  associations  among  pagans,  they  should  not 
leap  to  the  conclusion  that  China  is  a  land  of  milk  and 
honey,  where  every  unfortunate  creature  may  be  sure 
of  aid;  for  these  charitable  institutions  are  deplorably 
mismanaged.  Great  is  the  robbery  and  waste  by  ra- 
pacious underlings,  not  to  mention  the  utter  careless- 
ness and  the  various  abuses  to  be  found  in  these  Chi- 
nese establishments,  thereby  forming  a  striking  con- 
trast to  those  of  our  missions,  to  the  wondering  ad- 
miration of  the  natives.  Still  these  good  works  prove 
that  there  is  some  feeling  of  philanthropy  among  these 
people,  and  everywhere  the  missionaries  constantly 
meet  with  souls,  who,  as  TertulHan  would  say,  are 
'  naturally  Christians,  since  they  can  comprehend  the 
spirit  of  charity.' " 

The  contact  of  Western  irreligious  civilization  with 
the  Chinese  seems  as  objectionable  to  this   Catholic 


aoo       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

missionary  as  it  docs  to  the  Protestants,  and  he  calls 
the  treaty  ports  "  real  sinks  of  iniquity,  attracting  the 
wicked  and  corrupting  the  good  "  ;  and  proceeds : 

"  The  contact  with  Western  civilization  seems  to  turn 
the  head  of  the  ordinary  Chinese,  who  imitate  Euro- 
pean defects  in  addition  to  their  own  vices.  Nowhere 
are  there  men  so  absurd,  more  arrogant  and  insup- 
portable, than  certain  Celestials  in  foreign  employment. 
Infatuated  with  their  own  superiority,  the 
Europeans  are  often  blind  to  the  good  qualities  of  the 
Celestials  whom  they  offend  by  displaying  open  con- 
tempt of  the  natives  and  their  habits;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  sad  samples  of  our  civilization  often 
seen  at  the  ports,  are  not  likely  to  excite  in  the  minds 
of  the  natives  respect  or  admiration  for  modern  prog- 
ress. The  Chinese  are  heathens  who  have  not  had 
eighteen  centuries  of  Christianity  to  civilize  them ;  but 
it  must  be  admitted  that  with  all  their  errors  and  vices, 
they  have  not  fallen  as  low  as  other  nations.  For  in- 
stance, many  of  the  reproaches  addressed  by  St.  Paul 
to  the  Romans,  would  not  be  brought  by  him  against 
the  inhabitants  of  China,  were  he  now  to  visit  it.  We 
may  go  further,  and  say  that  the  corruption  existing  in 
China  is  less  deep-seated  and  less  visible  than  in  cer- 
tain of  our  Western  cities,  the  scandal  of  which  would 
bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek  of  a  Chinaman,  who  is 
deemed  to  be  so  wicked." 

The  number  of  Catholics  in  China  is  acknowledged 
to  be  doubtful,  but  Mr.  Kelly,  the  editor,  says :  "  If 
we  might  hazard  a  guess  as  to  the  actual  truth  of  the 
question,  probably  we  might  place  the  number  of 
Catholics  in  China  proper  at  three-quarters  of  a  mil- 
lion."   He  computes  the  annual  number  of  conversions 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    201 

to  be  rather  more  than  10,000,  not  including  those 
who  receive  baptism  at  death.  The  following  "  out- 
line of  the  Catholic  propaganda  "  in  the  province  of 
Che-Kiang,  is  given  and  declared  to  be  representative 
of  the  work  throughout  China : 

"  Che-Kiang  was,  in  1551,  a  portion  of  the  diocese  of 
Macao,  the  Portuguese  settlement  near  Canton,  but 
in  the  next  century  it  was  made  a  vicariate  apostolic 
with  three  other  districts  (1659).  Thirty-five  years 
later  we  find  Che-Kiang  a  vicariate  in  itself,  until  1790- 
1830,  when  it  was  joined  with  that  of  Kiang-Si.  In 
1846,  these  vicariates  were  separated  again  under  dif- 
ferent bishops,  and  there  has  been  no  subsequent 
change  in  this  division.  In  Che-Kiang  the  missiona- 
ries are  chiefly  Lazarists  or  Vincentians,  and  in  1896 
there  were  in  the  vicariate  10,419  Catholics,  i  bishop, 
13  European  and  10  native  missionaries,  and  5  native 
theological  students,  among  a  population  presumed  to 
be  over  23,000,000  heathens  and  5,359  Protestants. 
There  are  35  Sisters  of  Charity,  29  Vigins  of  Purga- 
tory, and  38  Catechists,  including  schoolmasters  and 
mistresses.  The  Sisters  of  Charity  in  the  province  of 
Che-Kiang  have  the  care  of  a  large  number  of  hospi- 
tals, orphanages,  and  similar  institutions.  They  cour- 
ageously compete  with  the  Protestant  ministers,  some 
of  whom  being  physicians,  also  have  hospitals,  and 
visit  the  sick  in  their  homes,  striving  by  this  powerful 
means  to  push  on  their  own  work.  The  Sisters,  com- 
prehending the  far-reaching  consequences  of  this  en- 
terprise, carry  out  their  visitations  of  the  sick  with 
the  utmost  zeal  and  success,  and  even  influential  fam- 
ilies, including  those  of  the  mandarins,  apply  to  them 
for  their  remedies  and  care.  The  Sisters  can  go  where 
they  please,  and  are  invited  into  the  houses  of  rich 


202       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  poor,  where  Ihey  nurse  an  immense  number  of 
pagans,  and  baptize  every  year  over  3,000  dying  chil- 
dren. Even  the  ferrymen  will  refuse  to  take  a  fee 
from  the  Sisters,  so  much  are  they  loved  at  Ningpo 
and  elsewhere. 

"  Such  is  the  brief  preliminary  outline  of  the  Catholic 
propaganda  as  it  exists  in  a  single  diocese  of  China. 
From  this  basis,  it  will  be  possible  to  calculate  in  some 
way  the  vast  work  which  is  carried  on  throughout  the 
empire,  in  which  there  are  (in  China  proper,  without 
including  the  dependencies),  27  such  districts,  each 
with  its  own  bishop  and  staff  of  clergy,  besides  four 
districts  which  are  differently  organized.  The  dio- 
cese of  Che-Kiang  may  be  considered  in  a  certain  sense 
as  a  typical  one,  inasmuch  as  it  stands  midway,  in  nu- 
merical importance,  between  the  very  large  and  the 
comparatively  small  divisions.  It  may  be  useful  here 
to  give  a  few  statistics  relating  to  the  largest  vicariate, 
that  of  Kiang-Nan  (Nan-King),  which  is  under  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  In  the  year  1892,  it  boasted  no  less 
than  96,382  Catholics,  with  128  priests,  32  seminarists, 
and  177  nuns.  There  is  one  other  Jesuit  mission,  that 
of  South  Pe-Chih-Li,  which  is  smaller  than  Kiang- 
Nan,  but  is  yet  among  the  most  flourishing  dioceses. 
There  are  six  Lazarist  missions,  including  that  of 
Northern  Pe-Chih-Li  or  Peking,  and  the  Franciscans, 
Dominicans  and  Augustinians  are  also  well  repre- 
sented. Most  of  the  missions  are  French ;  others  hail 
from  Belgium,  Italy,  and  Holland." 

Mr.  Kelly  says  there  is  but  one  English-speaking 
priest  in  China,  the  Rev.  John  McVeigh,  of  Peking. 
This  may  be  true,  but  a  brother,  whom  I  understood  to 
be  a  priest,  and  who  spoke  English  excellently,  took 
me  over  the  large  Catholic  establishment  at  Shanghai, 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    203 

in  the  summer  of  1897,  and  told  me  that  there  was  one 
priest  there  from  America  also,  the  only  American 
among  the  Catholic  missionaries  in  China.  There  is 
one  English  sister  in  Monseigneur  Reynaud's  episcopal 
city. 

Of  the  character  of  the  Catholic  Christians,  Mons. 
Reynaud  speaks  with  unwavering  confidence.  "  When 
we  consider  their  sincerity,"  he  says ;  "  when  we  con- 
sider that  at  the  call  of  grace  they  have  trampled 
under  foot  all  human  respect,  and  have  voluntarily  ex- 
posed, and  do  expose,  themselves  to  insult  and  perse- 
cution, how  can  we  imagine  China  to  be  a  country  in- 
vincibly opposed  to  the  progress  of  religion  and  the 
ethics  of  the  gospel  ?  "  He  defines  the  kind  of  conver- 
sion at  which  the  Catholic  missionaries  aim,  as  mean- 
ing "  not  merely  passing  from  one  altar  to  another, 
but  also  including  a  complete  change  of  life  along  with 
a  change  in  one's  beliefs."  At  the  same  time  Bishop 
Reynaud  believes  in  conversion  en  masse.  He 
writes : 

"  I  will  proceed  to  deal  with  an  assertion  sometimes 
made,  namely,  that  conversions  en  masse  are  no  longer 
possible  in  China.  Now  the  falsity  of  this  statement 
can  be  best  contradicted  by  events  that  occur  in  this 
very  province,  where  on  all  sides  we  are  invited  into 
large  villages,  and  deputations  are  sometimes  sent  to 
us  by  entire  cantons.  Overwhelmed  by  these  petitions, 
my  own  missionaries  no  longer  suffice  for  the  work, 
and  on  all  sides  they  are  begging  for  helpers." 

Some  might  skeptically  wonder  whether  these  vil- 
lage movements  are  such  spiritual  movements  as  are 
represented.  Protestant  missionaries  are  meeting  con- 
stantly with  such  appeals,  which  spring  not  from  re- 
ligious interest  but  from  desire  to  have  the  powerful 
help  of  missionary  influence  in  Chinese  lawsuits.     Lo- 


204       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cal  mandarins  fear  appeals  to  Peking,  and  the  pros- 
pect of  missionary  intervention  secures  for  a  litigant  in 
a  Chinese  court  consideration  which  unassisted  he 
would  never  receive.  This  danger  is  recognized  else- 
where in  this  book : 

"  Of  course  we  may  have  careless  or  even  vicious 
people,  but  sooner  or  later  they  turn  over  a  new  leaf; 
while  apostasy  is  a  rare  occurrence,  as  everything  is 
done  to  test  the  reality  of  each  conversion,  and  no  pains 
are  spared  for  the  instruction  of  the  catechumens.  In  a 
land  like  China,  where  abuse  of  authority,  bad  admin- 
istration, love  of  litigation,  and  a  vengeful  spirit  are 
rife,  if  we  were  to  open  our  doors  to  everybody,  we 
should  quickly  be  overwhelmed,  and  our  whole  time 
absorbed  in  settling  the  quarrels  of  the  people.  More- 
over, there  is  the  danger  of  unwittingly  posing  as 
champions  of  unjust  causes,  besides  the  risk  of  oppo- 
sition to  the  mandarins,  who,  at  best,  barely  tolerate 
us.  Religion  also  would  suffer,  as  the  converts  would 
be  accused  of  interested  motives  in  joining  us.  Hence 
it  is  very  necessary  to  be  most  particular  in  the  ad- 
mission of  catechumens,  and  to  reject  all  who  come 
to  us  with  lawsuits.  Before  pagans  can  be  inscribed 
as  catechumens  they  must  renounce  all  superstitions, 
destroy  their  idols,  begin  to  learn  the  catechism  and 
their  prayers,  and  to  live  as  if  they  were  already  Chris- 
tians." 

But  elsewhere  Mons.  Reynaud  recognizes  the  part 
played  by  Catholic  missions  in  political  intervention. 
"  Settling  local  difficulties  "  is  spoken  of  as  one  of  the 
duties  of  catechists,  and  the  missionarv  "  must  settle 
various  difficulties  that  always  arise  among  the  con- 
verts, such  as  family  persecution  and  worries  of  all 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    205 

kinds,  while  the  mandarins  are  always  ready  to  com- 
plicate the  simplest  cases ;  so  that  a  missionary  must 
be  kept  stationary  a  long  time  by  one  piece  of  busi- 
ness." It  is  recognized  also  that  in  some  places  the 
Catholic  missionaries  assume  the  rank  of  mandarins. 
It  is  not  stated,  though  it  might  truthfully  be  admitted, 
that  sometimes  they  usurp  the  functions  of  Chinese 
magistrates.  It  was  against  the  common  practise  of 
the  Catholic  missionaries  in  these  regards  that  the  Chi- 
nese government  protested  in  the  circular  issued  in 
1 87 1,  saying: 

"  Cases  for  litigation  between  Christians  and  non- 
Christians  are  under  the  equitable  jurisdiction  of  the 
authorities,  and  cannot  be  left  to  the  patronage  of  the 
missionaries.  ...  In  the  provinces  the  mission- 
aries make  themselves  the  advocates  before  the  local 
authorities,  of  the  Christians  who  have  suits.  Witness 
that  Christian  woman  of  Sze-Chuen,  who  exacted  from 
her  tenants  payments  of  a  nature  which  were  not  due 
to  her,  and  ultimately  committed  a  murder.  A  French 
bishop  took  upon  himself  to  address  a  despatch  to  the 
authorities  in  order  to  plead  for  the  woman,  and  pro- 
cured her  acquittal.  This  deed  aroused  animosities 
among  the  people  of  Sze-Chuen,  which  have  lasted 
to  this  day.  .  .  .  The  missionaries  ought  to  ob- 
serve Chinese  customs,  and  to  deviate  from  them  in  no 
respect;  for  instance,  they  ought  not  to  make  use  of 
seals,  the  use  of  which  is  reserved  for  functionaries 
alone.  It  is  not  allowed  them  to  send  despatches  to  a 
yamen,  whatever  may  be  their  importance.  If,  how- 
ever, for  an  urgent  matter  it  should  be  absolutely 
necessary  to  write,  they  may  do  it,  but  taking  good 
care  not  to  speak  of  matters  beyond  the  subject,  and 
making  use,  like  people  belonging  to  the  class  of  liter- 


2o6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ates,  of  the  ping-tieh  (petition).  When  the  mission- 
aries visit  a  great  mandarin,  they  must  observe  the 
same  ceremonies  as  those  exacted  from  the  hterates ; 
if  they  visit  a  mandarin  of  inferior  rank,  they  must 
also  conform  to  the  customary  ceremonies.  They  must 
not  unceremoniously  go  into  the  yamens  and  bring  dis- 
order and  confusion  into  the  affair.  .  .  .  The 
French  bishop,  Mons.  Pinchon,  in  a  letter  which  he 
sent  to  the  authorities,  made  use  of  an  official  seal 
manufactured  by  himself.  .  .  .  Mons.  Faurie, 
bishop  of  Kwei-chow,  handed  to  the  officer  charged 
with  the  remission  of  the  letters  of  the  government  a 
despatch  to  the  address  of  the  yamen,  to  ask  that  marks 
of  distinction  should  be  accorded  to  a  Taotai,  called 
Tc-Wen,  and  to  other  persons  besides.  In  Shantung  a 
missionary  passed  himself  off  as  hsien-fu  (provincial 
governor).  In  Sze-Chuen  and  Kwei-chow,  missionaries 
took  upon  themselves  to  demand  the  recall  of  man- 
darins who  had  not  arranged  their  affairs  to  their  satis- 
faction. So  it  is  not  only  the  authority  of  simple  func- 
tionaries that  they  assumed,  they  claim  further  a  power 
which  the  sovereign  alone  possesses.  After  such  acts, 
how  could  general  indignation  fail  to  be  aroused  ?  " 

There  has  been  much  in  the  corrupt  administration 
of  officials  to  invite  such  intervention.  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries have  not  been  free  from  it,  though  they  have 
been  much  less  guilty  than  Catholics.  The  conse- 
quences cannot  be  discussed  here.  It  is  enough  to  ob- 
serve that  Monscigncur  Rcynaud,  who  seems  to  carry 
on  his  work  in  Che-Kiang  with  as  fair  a  spirit  as  possi- 
ble,— Bishop  Moule  of  Hangchow,  of  the  Church  of 
England,  is  sceptical  on  this  point,  and  Bishop  Moule's 
judgment  is  reliable, — does  not  disavow  this  political 
interference. 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    207 

Of  course  such  interference  derives  its  power  from 
the  possibihty  of  the  intervention  of  foreign  govern- 
ments. There  are  signs  of  restiveness  on  the  part  of 
some  CathoHc  missionaries  under  the  embarrassment 
of  their  relations  to  the  French  government,  which  has 
been  their  chief  support.  The  consequences  of  the 
close  relationship  of  missions  with  government  they 
are  coming  to  see.  The  Rev.  L.  E.  Louvet  of  the 
"  Missions  fitrangeres  "  wrote  in  Les  Missions  Catho~ 
liqucs,  June  26,  1891 : 

"  Whence  comes  this  obstinate  determination  to  reject 
Christianity?  It  is  not  religious  fanaticism,  for  no 
people  are  so  far  gone  as  the  Chinese  in  skepticism  and 
indifference.  One  may  be  a  disciple  of  Confucius  or  of 
Lao-tze,  Mussulman,  or  Buddhist,  the  Chinese  govern- 
ment does  not  regard  it.  It  is  only  against  the  Chris- 
tian religion  it  seeks  to  defend  itself.  It  sees  all 
Europe  following  on  the  heels  of  the  apostles  of  Christ, 
Europe  with  her  ideas,  her  civilization,  and  with  that 
it  will  have  absolutely  nothing  to  do,  being,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  satisfied  with  the  ways  of  its  fathers. 

"  The  question,  therefore,  has  much  more  of  a  politi- 
cal than  a  religious  character,  or  rather  it  is  almost  en- 
tirely political.  On  the  day  when  intelligent  China 
shall  be  persuaded  that  it  is  possible  to  be  Chinese  and 
Christian  at  the  same  time ;  above  all,  on  the  day  when 
she  shall  see  a  native  ecclesiastic  at  the  head  of  the 
Church  in  China,  Christianity  will  obtain  liberty  in  this 
great  empire  of  400,000,000  souls,  whose  conversion 
will  carry  with  it  that  of  the  Far  East. 

"  The  efforts  of  the  missionaries  should  therefore  be 
directed  toward  separating  their  cause  entirely  from 
political  interests.  From  this  point  of  view  I  cannot 
for  my  own  part  but  deplore  the  intervention  of  Euro- 


2o8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

pean  governments.  Nothing  could  in  itself  indeed  be 
more  leijitimate,  but  at  the  same  time  nothing  could 
be  more  dangerous  or  likely  to  arouse  the  national 
pride  and  the  hatred  of  the  intellectual  and  learned 
classes.  In  truth,  even  from  the  special  point  of  view 
of  the  safety  of  the  missionaries,  what  have  we  gained 
by  the  provision  of  the  treaties?  During  the  first 
forty  years  of  the  present  century  three  missionaries 
only  were  put  to  death  for  their  faith,  after  judicial 
sentence,  viz. :  The  Ven.  Dufresse,  vIcar-apostolic  of 
Sze-Chuen,  in  1814;  the  Ven.  Get  and  the  blessed  Per- 
boyre,  Lazarists,  in  Hu-Peh,  in  1820  and  1840.  Since 
the  treaties  of  1844  and  i860,  not  a  single  death  sen- 
tence has  been  judicially  pronounced,  it  is  true,  but 
more  than  twenty  missionaries  have  fallen  by  the  hands 
of  assassins  hired  by  the  mandarins.  These  were :  In 
1856,  the  Ven.  Chapdelaine;  in  1862,  the  Ven.  Neel; 
in  1865,  1869,  i^73»  J^'^i""-  Mabileau,  Rigaud,  and  Hue, 
in  Yunnan.  Did  the  treaties  prevent  the  horrible  Ticn- 
Tsin  massacre  in  June,  1870,  the  murder  of  our  consul, 
of  all  the  French  residents,  of  two  Lazarists,  and  nine 
Sisters  of  Charity  ?  Nearly  every  year  Christian  com- 
munities are  destroyed,  churches  sacked,  missionaries 
killed  or  maimed.  Christians  put  to  death.  And  when 
France  protests  against  such  outrages,  she  Is  answered 
by  an  insolent  memorandum  (1871)  filled  with  calum- 
nies against  the  missionaries  and  their  works,  and  the 
chief  of  the  embassy  sent  to  Paris  to  excuse  the  massa- 
cres of  Tien-Tsin  is  the  very  man  who  directed  them, 
and  whose  hands  are  still  stained  with  the  blood  of 
our  countrymen !  " 

Bishop  Reynaud  describes  frankly  the  methods  of 
the  Catholic  missionaries  In  China.  Of  the  general 
training  of  inquirers  and  converts  he  says : 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    209 

"  When  possible  they  have  a  period  of  probation  in 
our  settlements,  where  they  are  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  Christianity,  and  by  good  example  are  trained  in  the 
maxims  of  the  gospel.  The  missionaries  constantly 
catechize  them,  and  explain  every  difficulty.  In  their 
own  homes,  too,  they  devote  themselves  to  the  study 
of  Christian  doctrine,  and  they  often  sing  their  prayers 
during  their  work,  or  repeat  lessons  while  travelling, 
and  some  will  even  pay  heathens  to  teach  them  to  read 
quicker.  Many  of  these  people  are  illiterate;  others  are 
advanced  in  years,  and  the  greater  number  are  occu- 
pied supporting  their  families,  so  that  it  requires  cour- 
age to  tmdertake  the  learning  of  prayers  and  the  cate- 
chism. The  women  are  even  worse  off,  as  they  gen- 
erally cannot  read  one  word.  On  an  average,  the  in- 
struction and  testing  of  catechumens  lasts  a  year,  and 
after  baptism,  they  are  subjected  to  a  rule  that  prevents 
their  forgetting  what  they  have  learned.  Every  Sun- 
day the  Christians  assembled  in  the  church  must  re- 
cite aloud  the  catechism,  so  that  it  is  gone  through 
several  times  in  the  year.  At  the  annual  confession, 
the  missionaries  ask  each  one  questions  from  the  cate- 
chism, which  obliges  the  people  to  recollect  what  they 
have  been  taught.  Experience  has  proved  the  value  of 
this  rule,  which  is  rigorously  enforced  in  this  province 
and  in  many  other  vicariates.  Our  Christians  thus 
carefully  instructed  are  usually  pious  and  fervent,  hav- 
ing an  instinctive  horror  of  the  superstitions  around 
them,  and  we  have  occasionally  to  moderate  the  zeal 
of  those  who  are  too  ready  to  express  their  contempt. 
At  the  same  time,  it  should  be  observed  that  some  of 
our  neophytes  are  really  confessors  for  the  faith,  owing 
to  the  tortures  and  ill-treatment  inflicted  to  enforce 
compliance  with  local  superstitions.  Their  fidelity  is 
more  to  be  lauded,  as  very  often  they  are  given  the 


2IO       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

option  of  a  small  fine,  which  they  steadfastly  refuse 
to  pay.  Our  Christians  are  most  attentive  to  their  de- 
votions, and  family  prayer  is  a  general  rule.  They 
are  very  fond  of  the  rosary,  the  fifteen  mysteries  be- 
ing sung  at  intervals  in  the  church  on  Sundays.  Many 
old  people  spend  their  whole  time  praying,  and  there 
is  great  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament." 

Lent  is  so  strictly  observed  among  the  Christians 
that  "  it  has  not  been  thought  expedient  to  publish  the 
mitigations  allowed  elsewhere."  Of  the  chanting  of 
the  Chinese  Christians,  Alons.  Reynaud  declares :  "  So 
melodious  and  devotional  is  this  chant  that  one  could 
spend  entire  days  listening  to  it,  and  it  is  the  general 
opinion  of  European  and  Chinese  missionaries,  that 
even  the  saints  in  heaven  could  not  sing  more  di- 
vinely." Mr.  Kelly,  the  editor,  cannot  forbear  adding 
in  a  footnote,  however: 

"  It  may  be  remarked  that  there  can  be  a  difference  of 
opinion  concerning  the  musical  abilities  of  Chinese 
catechumens  so  highly  extolled  by  Monseigneur  Rey- 
naud. An  English  lady,  who  is  a  member  of  his  flock, 
described  the  first  Sunday  in  China  as  '  one  long  at- 
tempt to  suppress  mirth  at  the  fearful  uproar  going 
on  during  Mass  and  Benediction,  when  every  Celestial 
in  the  congregation  sang  in  his  own  favourite  key.  He 
who  squalled  loudest,  prayed  best,  while  some  fervent 
women  kept  up  a  high  soprano  in  a  nasal  organ.  All 
the  devotions  are  sung  in  the  same  fashion,  and  the 
Chinese  appear  able  to  go  on  like  wound-up  machines.' 
But  there  is  no  accounting  for  tastes." 

The  Catholic  missionaries  do  not  shrink  from  estab- 
lishing separate  Christian  communities.     Of  orphans, 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    ail 

Bishop  Reynaiid  says :  "  Some  are  placed  in  Chris- 
tian famiHes,  while  others  form  Christian  villages, 
which  are  like  an  oasis  in  the  desert  of  paganism." 
And  apart  from  these  communities,  much  is  made  of 
temporary  settlement  of  Christians  under  the  super- 
vision of  and  in  contact  with  the  missionaries. 

"  The  same  remarks  about  the  children  may  be  ap- 
plied to  the  catechumens,  who,  unless  they  can  spend  a 
few  months  in  our  residences,  near  the  priests  and 
the  church,  never  become  really  reliable  Christians. 
The  example  and  the  daily  instruction  of  the  mission- 
aries, the  absence  from  pagan  surroundings,  and 
family  cares,  mean  everything  to  them,  as  it  is  chiefly 
by  sight  and  hearing  they  can  be  thoroughly  Chris- 
tianized." 

This  feeling  of  distrust  of  the  converts,  unless  they 
can  have  had  long  training,  is  specially  apparent  in 
what  Monseigneur  Reynaud  says  about  the  reliability 
of  the  native  priests : 

"  Though  the  native  clergy  are  of  such  assistance, 
they  are  unable  to  have  the  sole  charge  of  such  districts 
as  large  as  great  European  dioceses,  without  the  guid- 
ance of  an  European  missionary.  Many  cases  arise  in 
which,  by  his  superior  knowledge  and  experience,  the 
latter  is  better  able  to  give  a  decision  than  his  Chi- 
nese comrade,  who  is  not  so  capable  of  directing  other 
people.  The  general  rule,  therefore,  is  to  place  an 
European  priest  at  the  head  of  a  mission,  with  one  or 
two  native  missionaries  as  his  curates." 

On  this  account  Catholic  missionaries  are  believed  to 
be  indispensable  and  not  capable  of  displacement  by 


212       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

native  priests.  The  admirers  of  Catholic  missions 
who  criticize  Protestant  missions  as  foreign  in  com- 
parison, and  not  sufficiently  adaptive  to  the  native  Hfe, 
receive  a  check  here.  The  Protestant  missions  aim  at 
the  estabHshment  of  independent  native  churches,  and 
are  ready  to  push  forward  and  trust  the  native  preach- 
ers. The  CathoHc  missionaries  aim  at  subjection  of 
the  native  churches  to  Roman  direction,  and  so  while 
apparently  welcoming  the  Chinese  priests  to  equality 
with  the  foreign  missionaries,  really  retain  the  au- 
thority in  the  hands  of  the  latter.  Thus  Bishop  Rey- 
naud  emphasizes  the  need  of  missionaries  and  the  sec- 
ondary character  of  the  native  workers : 

"  In  the  desperate  contest  between  heaven  and  hell  for 
the  souls  of  men,  priests  are  the  proper  officials  de- 
puted to  fight  for  God  and  His  Catholic  Church,  and 
to  win  from  the  demon  slaves  who,  without  their  inter- 
vention, would  be  lost  forever.  Peaceable  soldiers  of 
the  cross,  they  effect  immense  conquests  for  the  true 
faith ;  indefatigable  labourers,  they  sow  the  good  seed 
of  salvation  in  all  directions,  often  fertilizing  it  by  their 
sufferings,  and  sometimes  by  their  blood.  They  are 
the  mainsprings  of  every  work  undertaken  for  the  con- 
version of  the  heathens  who  are  perishing  in  thou- 
sands. Therefore,  the  need  of  missionaries  is  most 
urgent  among  these  poor  pagans,  so  that  these  souls 
wandering  in  darkness  may  have  a  chance  of  receiving 
a  ray  of  hope. 

"  Even  at  Peking,  where  there  are  old  Christian  fam- 
ilies of  three  hundred  years'  standing,  the  Chinese 
priests  recjuire  the  support  of  a  European  missionary. 
How  much  more  do  they  require  him  in  the  vicariate 
of  Che-Kiang,  where  the  catechumens  are  nearly  all 
new  Christians.     The  missionaries  are  of  opinion  that 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    213 

it  is  only  after  four  generations  that  the  Chinese  can 
be  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  Catholic 
faith.  For  this  reason  only  Chinamen  whose  families 
have  been  Catholics  for  two  or  three  centuries,  are 
admitted  to  the  priesthood.  Converts  of  a  recent  date 
are  never  accepted  without  a  special  'dispensation, 
which  is  seldom  applied  for,  and  which  is  still  more 
seldom  granted. 

"  Baron  Von  Hubner,  in  his  book  of  travels,  says  that 
the  native  priests  'eagerly  seek  theological  discus- 
sions, but,  more  subtle  than  profound,  they  rarely  go 
beyond  a  certain  point  in  science.  Vis-a-vis  European 
missionaries  they  feel,  and  sometimes  resent,  their  in- 
feriority, but  if  treated  with  gentleness  and  discern- 
ment they  become  excellent  fellow-labourers.  With 
regard  to  morals,  they  leave  nothing  to  be  desired. 
They  have  never  yet  been  promoted  to  the  higher 
grades  of  the  hierarchy.' 

"  What  is  really  most  required  in  China  for  the 
spread  of  the  faith,  is  missionaries.  Were  there  more 
priests  we  should  have  more  catechumens,  as  one  mis- 
sionary can  only  attend  to  a  certain  number  of  con- 
verts, who  have  to  be  tested,  instructed,  and  trained  in 
the  ways  of  life,  all  of  which  entail  much  labour,  and 
often  many  journeys." 

In  the  matter  of  self-support.  Bishop  Reynaud  does 
not  confirm  the  idea  that  the  Catholic  missions  are  in- 
dependent of  financial  maintenance  from  the  home 
church.  No  Protestant  mission  using  foreign  money 
profusely  in  the  support  of  its  work  could  make  a  more 
sweeping  appeal  than  this : 

"  We  are  also  in  great  need  of  pecuniary  assistance. 
Just  as  soldiers  must  have  arms,  the  missionaries  must 


4l4       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

havc  funds,  to  build  the  chapel,  the  school,  and  the 
little  presbytery,  which  are  as  it  were  the  outposts  of 
the  mission ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  schoolmaster,  the 
cook,  a  servant,  and  a  band  of  young  converts  study- 
ing Christian  doctrine.  (Xir  strongholds  are  repre- 
sented by  our  great  churches,  central  schools,  orphan- 
ages, hospitals,  dispensaries,  asylums,  and  various 
other  works  of  charity.  Thus,  there  are  many  ways 
of  exhausting  the  missionary's  purse,  though  he  may 
himself  live  on  very  little,  as  our  converts  will  never 
let  him  die  of  starvation,  but  are  always  ready  to  share 
their  houses  and  food  with  him.  Still  a  large  family  of 
orphans  and  destitute  people  frequently  depend  on 
him  for  their  support.  Hence  if  we  do  not  choose  to 
assist  the  missions  by  sending  out  numerous  priests  and 
sufficient  material  aid,  it  will  be  useless  to  talk  of 
China  as  a  land  of  the  future  for  the  Catholic 
Church." 

The  Catholic  mission  in  Che-Kiang  appreciates  the 
necessity  of  education,  though  it  is  a  kind  of  education 
quite  distinct  from  that  conceived  by  the  Protestant 
missions  to  meet  the  real  and  vital  needs  of  the  people. 
Latin,  for  example!  The  Protestant  missions  have 
left  medievalism  some  three  or  four  centuries  behind. 

"  In  the  '  Petit  Seminaire  '  at  Chusan,  there  are  forty 
youths,  studying  Latin  and  other  sciences  under  a 
French  missionary,  so  as  later  to  become  learned 
clergymen  with  attainments  superior  to  those  of  the 
Chinese  literati.  In  the  *  Grand  Seminaire '  the  stu- 
dents apply  themselves  to  theology,  which  is  taught  in 
Latin  and  one  European  language,  and  they  also  fol- 
low other  classes  to  acquire  knowledge  that  will  be  use- 
ful in  their  future  ministry.    It  is  really  important  that 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    215 

the  native  clergy  should  be  highly  educated  in  a  coun- 
try where  learning,  though  based  on  the  teachings  of 
Confucius,  and  of  the  most  antiquated  description,  is 
held  in  such  great  esteem  by  all  ranks  of  people,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest." 

The  theory  of  separation  from  their  home  life  pre- 
vails in  the  Catholic  schools,  not  of  training  in  that 
life.     The  Bishop  says  of  the  schools : 

"  This  is  one  of  the  most  vital  works  of  the  mission, 
in  which  the  Christianizing  of  children  is  concerned. 
They  must  be  instructed  very  young,  and  taken  away 
as  much  as  possible  from  pagan  surroundings.  To  do 
this  properly,  the  schools  should  be  near  the  mission- 
aries. There  are  central  schools  in  all  the  chief  mission 
stations,  where  the  children  are  completely  separated 
from  bad  influences,  and  are  taught  to  practise  their 
religion  by  their  teachers,  and  by  the  good  example 
they  see  around  them,  whereas  children  who  have  not 
had  this  advantage  are  recognizable  at  a  glance,  as 
they  do  not  comprehend  their  religion  at  all  well. 

"  Another  very  important  consideration  is  the  follow- 
ing with  regard  to  schools.  They  are  often  found  to 
be  most  useful  as  a  means  of  furthering  conversions, 
as  according  to  a  French  missionary,  *  When  the  in- 
fant comes  to  school,  his  father  will  soon  follow  the 
child  to  the  church,  and  these  dear  children,  like  St. 
John  the  Baptist,  nil  the  valleys  and  bring  low  the 
mountains  and  hills,  by  opening  to  their  parents  the 
path  leading  to  our  Blessed  Saviour.' 

There  is  training  in  industrial  work  also.  "  Some 
boys  are  taught  agriculture  on  a  farm  belonging  to  the 
mission,  others  become  tailors,  shoemakers,  carpenters, 


2i6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

etc.,  and  it  is  also  desirable  that  they  should  be  taught 
the  weaving  of  satin,  which  would  be  a  very  lucrative 
employment." 

The  medical  work  in  this  vicariate  is  quite  extensive. 
There  are  "  no  less  than  8  hospitals,  4  hospices,  5  dis- 
pensaries, 10  schools,  and  5  orphanages,"  under  the 
care  of  thirty-five  Sisters  of  Charity  and  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul.  More  than  three  thousand  patients  are  said  to 
pass  annually  through  the  hospitals,  and  100,000  are 
said  to  attend  the  dispensaries  annually ;  "  while  the 
visits  paid  by  the  sisters  to  the  sick  in  their  own  homes 
are  over  35,000  in  the  year,"  or  an  average  of  about 
three  a  day  for  each  sister. 

This  medical  work  opens  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
Ic  is  quite  free,  no  charge  being  made  as  is  done  in 
most  of  the  Protestant  mission  hospitals  and  dispen- 
saries. It  makes  the  Sisters  so  popular,  the  Bishop  re- 
lates, that  the  ferry-boys  will  frequently  refuse  pay- 
ment from  them.  It  gives  splendid  opportunities  also 
for  baptisms  in  articiilo  mortis,  which  amount  to 
300  yearly,  "  and  the  good  work  done  in  that  way  by 
the  missionaries  can  hardly  be  computed."  The  Bishop 
gives  an  illustration  of  this  form  of  ministry,  and  also 
of  the  way  misunderstanding  of  the  language  is  over- 
ruled for  good. 

"  One  day  a  catechumen  arrived  out  of  breath  at  the 
mission  station,  and,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  told  the 
missionary  his  mother  was  dying.  The  father,  think- 
ing he  meant  his  old  Christian  grandmother,  fetched 
the  holy  oils,  and  hastened  away.  He  had  been  twenty 
minutes  on  the  road  when  the  catechist  who  was  ac- 
companying, asked,  *  Father,  why  have  you  brought 
the  holy  oils,  for  it  is  not  the  Christian  grandmother 
who  is  ill,  but  the  catechumen's  adoptive  mother,  who 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    a  17 

is  a  pagan  ? '  The  missionary  thought  it  was  very 
tiresome  to  be  taken  on  a  long  expedition  to  see  a 
pagan  woman,  but  the  sudden  inspiration  struck  him 
that  God  wished  to  save  this  poor  soul,  and,  therefore, 
had  allowed  him  to  misunderstand  the  catechumen's 
meaning.  Accordingly,  the  missionary  hurried  along 
the  bad  road,  praying  that  the  Sacred  Heart  would 
grant  the  grace  of  conversion.  This  heathen  woman 
had  formerly  adopted  the  catechumen,  but  she  knew 
very  little  about  his  conversion,  and  merely  said  that 
she  would  die  in  the  same  beliefs  as  her  ancestors.  It 
was  dark  when  the  missionary  arrived,  and  at  too  late 
an  hour  for  him  to  do  more  than  send  a  Christian  to 
say  to  the  woman,  *  The  father,  hearing  you  were  ill, 
has  come  expressly  to  see  you,  and  to  exhort  you  to 
honour  God,  and"  save  your  soul.  Will  you  receive 
him  to-morrow  morning  ?  '  The  sick  woman  at  once 
asked  for  baptism,  and  was  overjoyed  to  hear  that  the 
father  had  come  '  to  pour  the  holy  water  over  her.' 
As  she  was  not  in  immediate  danger  she  was  in- 
structed, and  the  next  morning,  after  mass,  the  mis- 
sionary questioned  her,  and  found,  to  his  joy,  that  she 
only  required  baptism  to  go  straight  to  heaven.  To 
prevent  superstitious  practises  after  her  death,  the  con- 
vert sent  word  to  .all  her  heathen  relations  that  she 
was  dying  a  Christian,  so  that  they  should  not  prevent 
her  burial  according  to  the  rites  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  as  very  often  trouble  arises  when  a  pagan  dies 
at  once  after  baptism,  and  the  heathens  persist  in  de- 
claring the  baptism  to  be  an  invention  of  '  the  Euro- 
pean devil.'  " 

In  the  superstitions  of  the  Chinese,  Monseigneur 
Reynaud  finds  a  preparation  for  the  gospel  rather  than 
an  exclusive  obstacle. 


2i8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

"  Even  their  erroneous  beliefs  may,  in  a  certain  sense, 
count  in  their  favour,  inasmuch  as  they  may  sometimes 
tend  to  show  a  strontj  yearning  after  the  supernatural. 
After  all,  an  indifferent  pagan,  having  no  faith  in 
his  idols,  no  idea  of  a  future  life,  or  regarding  it  as  the 
veriest  fable,  is  prone  to  be  far  less  susceptible  than 
the  others  to  the  arguments  of  the  Catholic  priest. 
Although  we  have  met  with  those  who 
were  perfectly  insensible  to  every  religious  feeling,  yet 
in  the  province  of  Che-Kiang  (which  is  one  of  the 
most  superstitious  in  China),  the  greater  number  of  the 
people  do  believe  in  something.  Above  all,  they  be- 
lieve that  it  is  not  in  vain  for  people  to  live  well  in  this 
world,  as  in  the  next  there  is  a  heaven  and  a  hell,  rep- 
resentations of  which  are  often  shown  by  their 
bonzes,  and  they  have  an  expressive  proverb,  saying, 
*  The  good  will  have  the  recompense  due  to  virtue,  and 
the  wicked  the  chastisement  due  to  evil ;  and  if  this 
retribution  has  not  yet  come,  it  is  because  the  time  for 
it  has  not  yet  arrived.'  .  .  .  The  spirit  inspir- 
ing such  practises  may  often  be  less  an  obstacle  to 
conversion  than  a  remote  preparation,  proving  that 
there  is  plenty  of  good  will,  although  it  is,  for  the  time 
unfortunately,  turned  in  the  wrong  direction.  As  a 
rule,  the  heathens  do  not  offer  any  serious  defence  of 
their  falso  beliefs,  nor  do  they  try  to  oppose 
our  doctrines.  Once  their  naturally  subtle  minds 
are  open  to  conviction,  they  comprehend  quickly 
enough  that  their  superstitions  are  as  ill  founded 
as  our  dogmas  are  worthy  of  the  highest  respect 
and  veneration.  If  they  have  followed  a  false 
religion,  it  has  been  through  ignorance  of  the 
true  faith,  and  because  they  could  find  nothing 
better  in  their  own  country.  Therefore,  we  may 
assume   that,   as   far  as  the   conversion   of  the  Chi- 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    219 

nese  is  concerned,  their  very  proclivity  to  superstition 
may  be  turned  to  good  account." 

It  is  very  interesting  to  note  the  Catholic  attitude 
toward  ancestor  worship.  This  must  be  sacrificed, 
says  the  Bishop. 

"  But  what  the  convert  feels  much  more  is  the  sacri- 
fice he  must  make  of  ancestor-worship,  which  is  so  pro- 
foundly rooted  in  China  that  several  have  considered 
it  as  the  chief  obstacle  to  the  conversion  of  the  Chinese. 
In  theory,  and  in  practice,  filial  piety  holds  the  first 
rank  among  their  virtues,  and  there  can  be  no  greater 
insult,  even  to  the  lowest  and  most  worthless  China- 
man, than  to  call  him  an  undutiful  son.  Ancestor- 
worship  is  an  act  of  filial  piety  by  which  children  ren- 
der divine  honours  to  the  memory  of  their  deceased 
parent.  Neglect  of  this  duty  by  the  Christians  exposes 
them  to  the  violent  anger  of  their  families  and  neigh- 
bours, which  fact  naturally  does  not  encourage  timid 
people  to  become  converts." 

Such  a  liberal-spirited  man  as  Dr.  Muirhead  con- 
tended at  the  Shanghai  Conference  in  1890  that  the 
Catholics  were  not  as  keen  and  severe  in  their  con- 
demnation of  ancestor-worship  as  might  appear,  the 
converts  being  allowed  to  share  so  far  in  the  worship 
of  ancestors  as  delivered  them  from  persecution,  and 
from  too  violent  rupture  with  their  old  superstitions. 
Dr.  Muirhead  said: 

"  I  have  spoken  to  several  of  the  Catholics  about  it, 
and  they  seem  to  adopt  a  practice  which,  at  least  from 
our  standpoint,  is  one  and  the  same  with  the  habitual 
practice  of  the  Chinese.    On  one  occasion,  when  I  was^ 


220       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

considering  the  subject,  I  went  to  our  chapel  in  the 
city,  and  the  first  man  who  came  in  turned  out  to  be  a 
Roman  CathoHc  belonging  to  the  country  on  the  North 
side  of  the  river.  1  asked  him  if  he  ever  practised 
ancestral-worship,  and  he  said,  '  At  certain  times  I 
have  the  tablets  of  my  five  ancestors,  who  were  con- 
nected with  the  Catholic  Church,  brought  out,  and  I 
ask  a  priest  to  come  and  perform  the  services  con- 
nected therewith,'  I  inquired,  '  Is  it  a  foreign  priest 
who  comes  ?  '  He  said,  '  No ;  that  would  be  too  ex- 
pensive. I  have  a  native  priest  on  the  occasion,  and 
he  does  the  thing  as  well,  but  much  cheaper.'  At  the 
time  when  the  rebels  were  round  Shanghai,  the  French 
admiral  was  killed,  and  a  requiem  for  his  soul  was 
performed  at  the  French  cathedral.  A  Christian  con- 
vert came  to  me  and  said,  '  How  is  it  that  the  Roman 
Catholics  adopt  in  this  instance  the  same  words  which 
the  Taoists  use  in  similar  cases  ? '  The  words  are 
ts'au  du  zvang  ling,  or  *  to  rescue  the  soul  of  the  de- 
ceased.' He  thought  it  most  inconsistent  with  Chris- 
tianity. I  only  mention  this  to  show  that,  in  the  ex- 
pressions of  the  Roman  Catholics,  however  much  the 
pope  may  have  interdicted  it,  there  is  a  course  of 
things  which,  according  to  all  accounts,  is  identical 
with  the  heathen  supersitions. 

And  Bishop  Reynaud  himself  points  out  that  the 
doctrine  of  purgatory  consoles  the  converts,  and,  in 
a  measure  replaces  with  authorized  and  orthodox  cere- 
monies the  old  rites  of  worship  of  the  departed. 

"  This  erroneous  and  superstitious  practise,  however, 
makes  the  catechumens  adopt  and  cherish  more  readily 
the  devotion  to  the  souls  in  purgatory,  and  this  is,  no 
doubt,  one   of   the    strongest   attractions   which   they 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    221 

find   in  our  faith,  as  compared  with  the    Protestant 
reUgion." 

There  is  a  special  order,  "  composed  exclusively  of 
natives,"  devoted  wholly  to  "  the  holy  souls,  and  often 
to  the  most  abandoned  of  them.  Each  day  they  offer 
for  the  solace  of  these  poor  souls,  their  works,  their 
sufferings,  and  all  their  satisfactions." 

Of  the  sale  of  opium  by  Christians  Monseigneur 
Reynaud  says : 

"  The  Christians  are  permitted  neither  to  plant  the 
poppy  seed,  nor  to  sell  the  drug,  and  must  seek  some 
other  employment,  which  is  not  easy  in  China  where 
there  is  such  competition  in  every  trade." 

The  importance  of  the  conversion  of  whole  families, 
and  especially  of  mothers,  is  thoroughly  appreciated. 

"  It  is  most  essential  that  the  mother  of  a  family 
should  be  the  first  converted,  for  she  will  bring  after 
her  the  husband  and  children,  and  keep  them  to  the 
practice  of  their  religion.  So  convinced  are  many 
missionaries  of  this  that  they  often  refuse  to  baptize 
the  men  without  their  wives." 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  feature  of  this  little 
book  is  its  discussion  of  Protestant  missions.  Its  tone 
is  kindly  on  the  whole.  The  editor  begins  a  foot-note 
in  eulogy  of  the  Rev.  Robert  Stewart,  of  the  Church  of 
England,  who  was  murdered  in  Fuh-Kien  province  in 
1895,  with  the  sentence.  "  As  we  shall  find  it  a  duty 
to  pass  some  severe  criticisms  upon  the  Protestant  mis- 
sions and  missionaries  in  China,  it  is  pleasant  to  be  able 
to  pay  a  tribute  to  the  beautiful  life  and  character  of 
an  Irishman,  of  whom  his  own  child  said,  '  Father 


222       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

never  liked  to  be  praised.'  "  The  author  speaks  of  the 
Protestant  missions  as  constituting  a  more  serious  em- 
barrassment even  than  the  native  priests,  and  ex- 
presses a  desire  to  have  some  EngHsh  priests,  who 
"  v^ould  prevent  our  Protestant  compatriots  from  be- 
having in  the  very  objectionable  way  they  often  do — 
not  at  Ningpo,  where  we  have  the  elite,  many  of  them 
educated  gentlemen,  but  in  the  interior,  where,  with 
some  of  them,  their  one  creed  seems  to  be  preaching 
against  Catholicity."  He  speaks  also  of  the  Protestant 
missionaries  as  "  objectionable  ministers,"  and  adds, 
"  We  find  that  converts  who  have  been  Protestants  find 
more  difficulty  in  implicitly  accepting  Catholic  dogma 
than  those  who  have  been  heathens."  Yet  he  recog- 
nizes their  efficiency  and  earnestness : 

"  With  their  knowledge  of  the  language  and  constant 
communication  with  Chinese  of  every  rank,  the  Prot- 
estant missionaries  are  better  able  than  the  consuls, 
the  custom  officials,  or  the  traders  to  present  us  with  a 
fair  description  of  the  Chinamen.  Consequently  they 
do  not  speak  so  badly  of  them,  and  some  even  praise 
the  Chinese  to  a  certain  extent.  Yet,  notwithstanding 
their  distribution  of  Bibles,  their  schools,  the  money 
they  spend  so  liberally,  the  men  they  employ,  and  the 
labours  in  which  they  certainly  do  not  spare  them- 
selves, the  ministers  are  far  from  successful." 

And  he  says :  "  The  intention  of  the  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries is  good."  These  generous  acknowledgments 
are  the  more  to  Mons.  Reynaud's  credit  when  it  is  ob- 
served that  his  chief  authority  on  Protestant  missions 
is  "  Sir  Henry  Norman."  Mr.  Norman  is  a  rather 
ludicrous  authority  on  missions. 

According  to  this  Catholic  view,  "  the  Protestants 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    223 

in  China  are  very  far  from  imitating  the  dolce  far 
nicntc  of  the  bonzes.  They  are  three  times  more  nu- 
merous than  the  Catholic  missionaries,  they  have 
plenty  of  means,  they  have  also  the  prestige  of  their 
nationality — most  of  them  coming  from  England, 
which  is  considered  as  a  faithful  and  generous  ally  by 
the  Chinese,  who  call  the  Protestant  creed  '  the  Eng- 
lish religion.' "  On  the  other  hand,  Bishop  Rey- 
naud  holds  that  there  are  radical  weaknesses  in  the 
Protestant  work.  Some  of  them  are  the  same  weak- 
nesses vv^hich  a  Catholic  would  find  in  Protestantism 
anywhere.  He  criticizes  first  the  consecration  un- 
guided  by  a  mission  tradition : 

"  Many  of  these  ministers  coming  from  England  sup- 
ply their  want  of  theological  science  by  a  mystic  en- 
thusiasm which  leads  them  into  various  delusions.  On 
their  arrival  in  China  they  find  no  tradition  to  guide 
them,  no  direction  to  assist  their  inexperience.  They 
come  to  replace  missionaries  who  are  going  away ; 
and  in  a  place  where  all  is  so  strange,  so  different  from 
Europe,  left  completely  to  themselves,  these  young 
men,  with  all  the  good  will  in  the  world,  must  be  liable 
to  the  most  discouraging  mistakes  and  errors  of  judg- 
ment." 

There  is  some  real  force  in  this  criticism.  Secondly, 
he  criticizes  "  the  incoherence  of  the  Protestant  creeds 
and  the  conflicting  instructions  of  the  ministers ;  "  and 
declares  that  because  of  their  failure  in  direct  conver- 
sions, the  Protestant  missionaries  have  turned  aside 
to  philanthropy,  which  yet  he  calls  a  "  powerful  means 
to  further  their  own  work." 

"  Even  the  pastors  lament  this  serious  obstacle,  and 
in  their  assembly  at  Shanghai,  1890,  they  were  obliged 


214       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  sacrifice  some  of  their  special  doctrines,  and  to  turn 
their  labours  more  in  the  direction  of  schools,  hospi- 
tals, and  translation  of  books.  At  present  they  have 
widened  their  sphere  of  action  by  a  crusade  against 
wine,  tobacco,  and  women's  small  feet.  To  this  last 
objection,  a  Chinaman  at  Ningpo  replied  in  the  news- 
paper that  there  were  other  more  necessary  reforms 
needed,  chiefly  as  to  the  importation  of  opium,  which 
should  be  first  checked,  and  also  in  the  custom  of 
tight-lacing,  which  they  declared  to  be  more  injurious 
to  the  European  ladies  than  tying  the  feet  is  to  their 
own.  These  questions  may  gratify  philanthropists,  but 
they  will  never  convert  the  Chinese." 

Many  Protestant  missionaries  have  lamented  the  dis- 
proportion between  the  philanthropic  mission  agency 
and  the  direct  work  of  evangelization.  Mons.  Rey- 
naud  goes  on  to  criticize  the  very  genius  of  Protestant- 
ism as  insufficient  for  China :  "  The  absence  of  unity  of 
belief,  the  rejection  of  authority  in  favour  of  private 
judgment  are  radical  defects  of  Protestantism.  Now 
this  very  principle  of  authority  is  everything  to  a  Chi- 
nese, being  the  foundation-stone  of  family  and  social 
existence,  and  no  people  have  more  respect  for  abso- 
lute authority  than  the  Celestials.  A  religion  that  re- 
jects this  vital  principle  can  never  be  regarded  in  a 
serious  light  by  the  Chinaman."  Another  class  of 
criticism  is  quite  suspicious: 

"  By  their  attacks  upon  the  Virgin  IMother  of  God, 
the  ministers  merely  disgust  the  Chinese,  who  have  such 
an  exalted  idea  of  their  own  mothers  that  a  woman  has 
no  name,  but  is  always  known  as  the  mother  of  her 
son,  '  Lipa-am,'  '  Atching-am  ' — the  mother  of  Lipa 
and  Atching.    Therefore  the  devotion  to  Our  Lady  is 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    225 

readily  understood  by  catechumens;  and  once  a  whole 
band  of  pagans,  on  hearing  abuse  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  deserted  the  Protestant  chapel,  and  came  to 
the  Catholic  missionary  to  ask  for  baptism." 

The  comfortable  lives  of  the  Protestant  missiona- 
ries, their  being  married  men,  their  public  propaganda 
are  all  regarded  as  further  objections.  It  is  not  gen- 
erally known,  I  think,  that  the  Catholic  missions  carry 
on  so  little  of  a  direct  evangelistic  propaganda,  but 
rather  wait  for  the  people  to  come  to  them,  or  to  be 
drawn  in  by  this  motive  or  that.  The  general  feeling 
m  China  is  that  the  European  priests  having  in  some 
places,  as  Bishop  Reynaud  says,  "  the  rank  of  man- 
darins," rather  hold  aloof  from  the  immediate  contact 
with  the  people,  and  the  delivery  to  the  hearts  of  the 
people  of  the  appeals  of  the  gospel.  Pere  Repa 
charged  this,  in  substance,  years  ago.  Bishop  Rey- 
naud sets  forth  the  claim  of  the  Catholic  missions  to 
identity  of  life  and  interests  with  the  people,  but  the 
claim  scarcely  comports  with  the  criticism  of  the  over- 
familiarity  of  the  Protestant  missionaries  with  the  peo- 
ple, as  this  latter  criticism  seems  inconsistent  with  the 
charge  that  these  missionaries  are  not  close  to  the 
people.  Still,  his  description  of  the  Catholic  method 
is  worth  quoting : 

"  These  and  other  defects  are  the  true  reasons  of  the 
little  success  of  Protestantism  in  China,  and  our  cause 
should  not  be  confounded  with  tlieirs,  as  we  follow  a 
very  different  road,  with  very  different  results.  We 
do  not  go  to  China  to  criticize  manners  or  to  destroy 
customs  that  are  not  at  variance  with  Catholic  doc- 
trine, even  tliough  they  be  repugnant  to  Western  prej- 
udice.    The  crreat  aim  set  before  our  missionaries  bv 


20.6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Rome,  the  sole  desire  of  their  hearts,  is  to  implant  the 
knowledge  of  faith  and  charity  in  the  souls  of  the 
Chinese.  This  is  the  polar  star  that  directs  their 
labours.  Arriving  in  the  country,  instead  of  being 
abandoned  to  themselves,  they  find  a  path  traced  out 
for  them  which  aids  their  inexperience.  Subject  to  a 
recognized  authority  that  prevents  them  from  being 
led  astray  by  first  impressions,  it  is  not  at  their  own 
expense,  at  their  own  risk  and  peril,  or  by  dint  of  grop- 
ing their  way  through  innumerable  mistakes,  that  they 
learn  to  understand  the  natives  and  customs  of  their 
new  country.  From  the  commencement  they  arc 
guided  by  the  instruction  of  experienced  men,  and  in 
this  Chinese  empire,  a  perplexing  labyrinth  for  many 
foreigners,  they  have  only  to  follow,  not  to  seek,  the 
right  path.  Free  from  all  ties  of  this  world,  having 
no  family  cares  to  distract  their  attention,  they  are  at 
perfect  liberty  to  follow  their  vocation,  which  is,  like 
the  Apostles,  to  be  all  things  unto  all  men,  in  order 
to  gain  souls  to  Jesus  Christ.  As  the  Son  of  God 
came  on  earth  to  save  men,  so  the  missionaries  who 
continue  His  work,  set  aside  their  prejudices  and  con- 
form themselves,  as  far  as  is  allow^able,  to  the  manners 
of  the  people  they  wnsh  to  convert.  This  being  an 
essential  condition  to  insure  success,  the  missionaries 
lead  the  life  and  wear  the  dress  of  the  Chinese,  so 
that  there  may  be  as  little  difference,  and  as  few  causes 
of  distrust,  between  them  and  the  people,  as  possible, 
and  a  closeness  of  intercourse  which  will  enable  them 
to  smooth  away  many  difficulties,  and  to  study  and 
understand  the  good  and  bad  qualities  of  the  soil  they 
have  to  cultivate.  At  the  same  time,  by  their  sacred 
calling,  they  are  able  to  discern  the  virtues  and  the 
vices  of  the  individual ;  they  come  in  contact  with 
families,  and  in  this  way  they  acquire  knowledge  of 


Roman  Catholic  View  of  Missions  in  China    227 

many  a  detail  connected  with  the  life  of  the  people. 
The  Chinese  do  not  consider  them  as  travellers  or 
mere  birds  of  passage,  but  as  neighbours  who  speak 
the  same  language,  and  very  often  as  dear  friends 
living  under  the  same  roof.  In  one  word,  China  is 
the  adopted  home  in  which  the  Catholic  missionaries 
live  and  die,  and  which  they  love  in  spite  of  many 
privations  and  hardships,  that  are  not  as  well-known 
as  the  dangers  of  ill-treatment  and  murder,  and  yet 
are  the  great  cause  of  the  mortality  that  so  rapidly 
thins  the  ranks  of  these  zealous  priests." 

Mons.  Reynaud  claims  for  Catholic  Christianity  a 
power  of  adaptation  to  the  East  which  Protestant 
Christianity  lacks,  and  a  consequent  greater  success : 

"  The  CathoHc  missionaries  in  China,  as  in  Hindu- 
stan, succeed  far  better  in  making  some  impression  upon 
the  hard  surface  of  Oriental  society  than  do  their  Prot- 
estant rivals.  But  is  this  so  very  surprising?  No,  for 
coming  eighteen  centuries  ago  from  the  East,  the 
Catholic  religion  must  be  more  congenial  to  Orientals 
than  the  contradictory  creeds  of  a  modern  religion, 
which  is  so  deeply  imbued  with  European  ideas,  that 
it  is  at  complete  variance  with  those  of  the  conserva- 
tive Asiatics,  who  in  thought  and  in  custom  are  much 
the  same  as  their  ancestors  in  the  far-off  days  which 
were  illumined  by  the  coming  of  '  The  Light  of  the 
World.'  " 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  not  possible  to  withhold 
from  the  Catholic  missions  in  China  our  genuine  ad- 
miration for  their  devotion,  sagacity,  and  sincerity. 
Our  ways  are  not  their  ways,  and  there  is  a  great 
deal  which,  from  our  point  of  view,  we  should  criti- 


22  8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cize  severely ;  but  it  is  pleasanter  to  close  this  sketch 
of  Bishop  Reynaud's  little  book,  with  a  candid  recog- 
nition of  its  kindliness  and  good  spirit,  and  of  the 
deep  love  for  souls  which  it  reveals.  If  we  disagree 
with  the  Catholic  missionaries  in  their  methods  or 
views,  at  least  let  us  be  ashamed  to  be  surpassed  by 
them  in  devotion  to  our  Lord,  or  in  longing  for  the 
salvation  of  men. 


XIX 

HIGHER  EDUCATION  IN  MISSIONS  WITH  SPE- 
CIAL REFERENCE  TO  CONDITIONS  IN  CHINA 

IT  is  not  intended  here  to  re-open  the  question  of 
the  right  of  higher  education  to  a  place  among  the 
agencies  of  missions.  That  question  is  closed.  In- 
dividuals may  disagree  with  the  judgment  that 
has  been  reached,  and  in  fields  where  many  missions 
are  at  work,  some  may  be  able  to  dispense  with  any 
extensive  educational  work,  the  duty  being  discharged 
by  other  missions.  But  the  plain  and  unavoidable 
necessities  of  the  mission  work  have  simply  compelled 
the  missionary  movement  to  develop  the  agency  of 
education.  What  measure  of  opposition  there  has 
been  to  it  has  been  probably  due,  as  much  as  to  any- 
thing else,  to  the  protest  against  the  extreme  views  of 
moderatism  and  educationalism  in  the  home  Church, 
from  which  the  early  missionary  spirit  was  a  reaction. 
In  most  missions,  the  educational  agency  was  used 
from  the  beginning,  and  if  ever  questions  have  arisen 
regarding  it,  they  have  concerned  not  the  fundamental 
principles  of  it,  but  only  problems  of  proportion,  limits 
and  methods.  If  education  is  right  and  useful  in  the 
propagation  and  support  of  Christianity  at  home,  it 
is  right  and  useful  abroad. 

Higher  education  is  not  an  exact  term.  It  would 
connote  in  one  land  less  or  more  than  in  another.  We 
mean  by  it  in  missions  such  education  as  may  be  re- 
quired, beyond  what  is  primary  and  intermediate,  to 
enable  the  native  church  to  meet  its  intellectual  prob- 
lems, to  do  its  whole  work,  to  hold  its  own  and  make 
headway  against  whatever  difficulties,  indigenous  or 

229 


230       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

imported,  may  confront  it.  It  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  every  mission  which  would  fulfil  its  divinely  ap- 
pointed task,  to  raise  up  for  its  churches  some  men 
of  thorough  training  and  masterly  ability.  In  every 
Asiatic  mission  field  there  are  opponents  of  Christi- 
anity who  must  be  met,  to  be  sure,  by  the  unanswer- 
able argument  of  Christlike  lives,  but  by  these  given 
utterance  in  men  who  understand  the  difficulties  of 
their  people  and  who  are  able  to  justify  the  Christian 
faith  to  reason.  And  there  must  be  men  of  this  gen- 
eral type  not  among  the  preachers  only.  Christian 
leadership  is  not  solely  a  matter  of  clergy.  The  strong- 
est churches  are  made  up  of  strong  men  following 
strong  leaders.  No  strength  of  leadership  will  atone 
for  weakness  of  following.  And  where  we  seek  to 
build  up  strong  indigenous  churches,  we  must  work 
for  power  in  all  lines,  and  endeavour  to  supply  Chris- 
tian men  to  lead  in  every  sphere.  Moreover,  the  East 
is  bound  to  come  into  our  Western  secular  knowledge. 
Shall  it  be  led  in  by  Christian  men  and  be  therein 
guided  by  them,  or  shall  our  religion  and  other  knowl- 
edge be  divorced  in  its  view  and  arrayed  in  hostility 
one  to  the  other? 

In  spite  of  his  complaint  at  the  development  of 
Christianity  which  "  drew  into  the  domain  of  cos- 
mology and  religious  philosophy  a  Person  who  had  ap- 
peared in  time  and  space,"  Harnack  must  recognize 
the  necessity  which  is  inherent  in  Christianity,  "  to 
come  to  terms  with  all  life — with  intellectual  life  as 
a  whole."  At  home  we  may  try  to  divorce  the  simple 
religious  message  of  the  gospel  from  our  other  knowl- 
edge. But  it  cannot  be  done  in  Asia.  There,  as 
Oswald  Dykes  points  out,  "  Christianity  connects  it- 
self with  the  whole  view  which  man  takes  of  the  world 
as  related  to  God,  as  a  creation  of  God.    It  has  to  do 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  231 

with  fundamental  questions  which  underUe  all  our 
physical  science  as  well  as  speculative  philosophy." 
With  Western  civilization  spreading  over  Asia  and 
introducing  all  the  questions  of  Western  skepticism 
and  speculation,  as  well  as  that  mass  of  knowledge 
with  which  Christianity  alone  of  all  religions  can  live, 
it  is  simply  necessary  that  we  should  introduce  into 
Asia  at  least  enough  of  our  Western  theory  of  life 
and  of  the  inter-relation  of  Christianity  and  science 
and  philosophy  to  equip  the  native  churches  for  a 
struggle  which  they  are  to  share  in  common  with  us. 

No  matter  how  we  state  the  aim  of  missions,  we  can- 
not make  it  so  elementary  as  to  relieve  ourselves  from 
this  responsibility.  We  must  equip  the  native  churches 
for  their  work.  This  work  will  include  the  reconcili- 
ation of  Christianity  with  other  knowledge,  old  and 
new.  We  may  be  satisfied  merely  to  endeavour  to  pre- 
pare a  few  men  for  this  work  by  personal  instruction, 
but  in  pursuing  this  course  the  principle  is  conceded, 
and  those  who  establish  colleges  are  simply  doing  the 
same  thing  on  a  more  efifective  and  adequate  scale. 

In  some  lands  the  educational  agency,  however 
tenacious  of  the  general  purpose  of  higher  educational 
work  as  I  have  just  suggested  it,  has  been  thrown 
back  by  the  solidity  of  the  resisting  mass  of  native 
opinion  and  character  and  has  been  forced  to  content 
itself  with  certain  great  secondary  advantages  and 
results  of  education.  This  has  been  the  case  in  India. 
Some  great  preachers  and  other  leaders  have  been 
raised  up,  but  in  the  main,  the  results  of  educational 
work  have  been  (i)  to  undermine  superstition  and  to 
purify  opinion  without  winning  full  acceptance  of  the 
Christian  faith;  (2)  to  set  Christianity  in  secure  and 
commanding  relations  to  the  new  knowledge  pouring 
into  the  land;  (3)  to  bring  to  bear  on  the  most  influ- 


232       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cntial  section  of  the  people — those  who  otherwise 
would  not  have  been  reached  at  all, — a  powerful  even 
though  not  a  successful  propaganda;  (4)  to  intro- 
duce Christian  conceptions  and  moral  sanctions  and 
ideals  into  minds  which  have  accepted  the  substance 
while  unprepared  to  confess  the  form.  These  are 
goods,  and  they  have  justified  the  work  done,  even 
though  less  has  been  attained  than  was  striven  for. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  resort  for  justification  to  com- 
parison with  the  failure  of  other  agencies  to  attain  all 
they  have  aimed  at. 

In  China,  mission  colleges  have  not  met  with  such 
disappointment  as  this.  They  have  in  the  main  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  what  they  were  established  to  do — 
raise  up  Christian  leaders,  as  preachers,  teachers  and 
laymen  in  various  honourable  services.  If  old  condi- 
tions had  continued  unaltered,  the  work  would  have 
gone  on  substantially  unchanged  also.  But  the  educa- 
tional situation  in  China  is  undergoing  a  profound 
change.  In  1895,  in  his  Educational  Directory, 
Dr.  Freyer  reported  that  there  were  ten  government 
schools  in  China, — 3  Tung  Wen  establishments,  3 
Naval,  I  Military,  i  Mining  and  Engineering,  i  Med- 
ical and  I  Telegraph.  The  old  Confucian  educational 
system  was  in  full  swing,  from  village  school  to  Han- 
lin  Academy,  "  wen  chang  "  and  all.  There  was  in 
the  ports  a  demand  for  English,  but  neither  there  nor  in 
the  interior  was  there  any  demand  for  a  genuine 
Western  education.  Then  came  the  Japan  War 
and  its  revelation  of  Chinese  inefficiency  which 
dumbfounded  the  Chinese  officials.  The  demand 
for  education  and  books  which  ensued,  the  Re- 
form Era,  the  reaction  of  the  Boxer  Uprising,  and 
the  present  situation  we  all  know.  That  the  de- 
velopment of  the  country  will  now  be  smooth  and 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  233 

regular,  it  would  be  vain  to  expect,  but  the  pros- 
pects are  brighter  than  ever  before  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  Western  methods  and  ideas.  The  provincial 
governors  are  setting  up  schools  on  such  a  basis,  and 
local  gentry  are  contributing  for  such  purposes.  If 
the  wen  chang  is  truly  to  be  abolished,  and  Western 
sciences,  bona  fide,  introduced  into  the  government 
examinations,  institutions  like  these  will  be  multiplied, 
and  the  pure  missionary  institutions  also  will  be 
crowded  by  men  who  have  no  primary  concern  for 
Christianity,  but  who  want  the  knowledge  not  other- 
wise obtainable. 

Now,  what  course  shall  we  pursue  in  view  of  this 
situation?  (i)  Some  may  say,  "Give  no  heed  to  it. 
Go  on  just  as  though  it  did  not  exist.  Preach.  Edu- 
cate preachers  and  train  your  Christian  boys  for  posi- 
tions of  influence ;  but  let  the  demand  for  secular 
education  for  its  own  sake  alone."  Both  the  advan- 
tages and  the  disadvantages  of  this  course  are  evident. 
(2)  Others  may  say,  "This  is  a  providential  oppor- 
tunity. The  day  of  individual  evangelization  has 
passed.  The  time  has  come  to  work  for  classes.  All 
energies  should  now  be  directed  to  this  special  work. 
If  we  delay  or  neglect,  other  agencies,  some  hostile  to 
us,  will  enter  it,  occupy  the  field,  and  we  shall  never 
recover  the  opportunity.  Call  in  the  country  evangel- 
ists and  all  missionaries  qualified  for  such  work,  and  set 
them  at  work  translating  books  and  teaching  Western 
knowledge."  (3)  Of  course  the  7'ia  media  is  the 
golden  path  of  mission  policy,  (a)  We  should  not  al- 
low the  opportunity  we  now  have  of  moulding  the  edu- 
cational institutions  of  the  government  to  escape.  As 
Dr.  Parker  said  in  the  Third  Triennial  Meeting  of  the 
Educational  Association  of  China,  "  We  Christian  edu- 
cators ought  to  be  prepared  to  enter  the  doors  thus  open 


234       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  us.  Every  one  of  these  institutions  ought  to  have 
Christian  presidents  and  Christian  professors  in  charge 
of  them  and  all  the  departments  in  them.  What  a 
grand  opportunity  to  exert  a  commanding  influence 
over  the  educational  destinies  of  the  empire,  and,  by 
this  means,  over  all  the  affairs  of  the  country.  We 
ought  to  see  to  it  that  the  men  needed  for  these  posi- 
tions shall  be  forthcoming.  All  our  missions  should 
have  young  men  sent  out  from  home,  specially  trained 
as  educators,  to  study  the  Chinese  language  and  pre- 
pare themselves  to  fill  the  positions  in  the  government 
and  private  schools  that  are  opening  to  us  on  every 
hand.  If  Christian  teachers  do  not  get  these  places, 
they  will  be  filled  by  unbelievers  and  heathen,  as  has 
been  the  case  in  Japan.  This  would  indeed  be  a  cause 
for  lamentation.  There  is  yet  time  to  save  the  day  for 
Christian  education.  But  we  must  be  quick  about  it. 
The  Chinese  must  have  the  teachers,  and  they  are  going 
to  get  them,  and  if  we  do  not  supply  the  right  kind, 
they  will  get  the  wrong  kind." 

The  question  whether  missionaries  should  withdraw 
from  their  direct  work  to  accept  positions  in  the  col- 
leges the  Chinese  are  providing,  Dr.  Parker  is  disposed 
to  answer  in  the  negative.  "  Having  come  to  China  for 
the  express  purpose  of  teaching  the  gospel  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  they  do  not  feel  at  liberty  to  give  up 
or  relinquish  that  work  in  any  measure,  or  place  them- 
selves, voluntarily,  in  positions  where  restrictions  of  a 
more  or  less  serious  character  may  be  thrown  around 
them  which  will  prevent  them  from  fulfilling  their  mis- 
sion to  the  people  in  its  holiest  and  highest  meaning. 
Each  one  will  decide  this  question  for  himself  or  her- 
self, and  the  decisions  reached  by  those  concerned  will 
differ  according  to  circumstances.  For  myself  I  feel 
very  strongly  that  a  missionary  ought  not  to  give  up 


Higher  Education  In  Missions  235 

his  mission  work  for  a  position  in  government  employ. 
He  cannot  afford  to  place  himself,  willingly,  in  a  posi- 
tion where  his  opportunities  for  preaching  the  gospel 
are  taken  away.  Neither  can  he  afford  to  give  the  im- 
pression to  those  Chinese  who  know  him  that  the 
preaching  of  the  gospel  is  a  secondary  matter,  and 
may  be  given  up  for  the  sake  of  a  high  salary,  an  easier 
or  more  pleasant  situation,  or  the  honours  and  emolu- 
ments of  official  position.  Whoever  does  this  contra- 
dicts, and,  so  far  as  his  influence  goes,  hinders  the 
work  of  saving  the  people  from  their  sins.  And  yet 
there  are  exceptions.  Now  and  then  it  happens  that 
a  missionary  finds  himself  in  circumstances  such  that 
he  can  and  perhaps  ought  to  undertake  the  charge  of  a 
Chinese  educational  institution.  For  such  we  should 
have  no  words  of  condemnation.  To  their  own  Master 
they  stand  or  fall."  At  the  same  Conference,  Dr. 
Sheffield  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  limitations 
which  have  hitherto  hedged  about  the  work  of  Chris- 
tian men  in  government  institutions  are  disappearing, 
that  "  Christian  men  are  certain  in  the  future  to  have 
a  larger  opportunity  than  in  the  past  to  exert  a  mould- 
ing influence  over  the  lives  of  their  pupils."  The  head- 
ship of  these  new  schools  should  certainly  not  be  al- 
lowed to  fall  into  hands  hostile  to  Christianity,  and 
yet  Christian  missionaries  surely  cannot  accept  such 
positions  if  debarred  from  using  their  influence,  of 
course,  in  proper  ways  in  behalf  of  Christianity.  Dr. 
Verbeck  and  Dr.  McCartee  in  Japan  certainly  did  right 
in  seizing  the  opportunity  which  came  to  them  to  in- 
fluence the  educational  system  of  Japan,  (b)  We 
should  not  allow  the  present  commercial  or  political 
demand  for  Western  education  to  swamp  the  mission- 
arv  character  of  our  own  institutions.  We  should  so 
far  modify  our  plans  as  will  enable  us  to  get  hold  of 


2^6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

more  and  better  pupils,  but  not  to  the  extent  of  lower- 
ing our  standards  of  thoroughness  of  work  and  of  open- 
ness and  intensity  of  religious  influence.  Especially 
should  we  aim  to  do  such  work  in  our  missionary  in- 
stitutions as  will  enable  us  to  supply  the  demand  for 
native  teachers  of  high  grade.  It  is  more  important  in 
our  mission  schools  to  raise  up  teachers  for  Chinese 
schools  than  to  educate  for  other  government  office  the 
men  whom  these  teachers  would  teach.  "  The  demand 
of  the  hour,"  said  Dr.  Mateer,  at  one  of  the  Educational 
Conferences,  "  is  for  teachers  to  supply  what  first-class 
colleges  and  high  schools  are  needed  in  every  province. 
This  demand  will  continue  and  increase  beyond  our 
power  to  supply  it.  If  we,  as  educators,  are  able  to 
supply  the  best  teachers  in  the  market  and  who  are 
at  the  same  time  Christian  men,  we  will  control  China 
socially,  politically,  and  religiously.  Preachers  are 
all  important,  and  we  must  and  will  get  them,  the  finest 
of  the  wheat  sifted  out  from  the  mass  we  are  educa- 
ting. But  the  special  call  of  the  hour  is  for  teachers 
to  plant  and  nurture  the  new  intellectual  life  that  is 
coming  into  China.  It  is  all  important  that  these 
teachers  be  Christians.  If  they  are  Christians  they 
will  be  an  untold  potency  on  the  side  of  truth  and 
righteousness,  and  may  by  the  blessing  of  God  turn 
the  scale  of  the  nation's  future."  I  think  the  emphasis 
here  is  a  little  too  heavy,  but  barring  that,  the  view  is 
true,  (c)  At  the  same  time  that  we  are  doing  all 
this,  we  most  assuredly  are  not  to  call  in  the  missionary 
evangelists.  They  are  needed  more  than  ever,  and 
should  be  multiplied.  The  same  conditions  which 
bring  pupils  to  the  schools  and  create  the  demand  for 
Western  education,  dispose  the  people  to  listen  with 
interest  to  the  gospel.  And  besides,  the  very  success 
of  the  educational   work   depends   upon   its   being  a 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  -237 

part  of  a  justly  balanced  propaganda  in  which  by  mu- 
tual checks  and  interactions,  each  branch  of  work  is 
held  true  to  the  common  supreme  aim. 

What  has  been  said  has  suggested  some  elements 
in  the  situation  of  higher  mission  education  in  China 
which  strongly  distingush  it  from  the  situation  else- 
where on  the  mission  field.  It  may  be  well  to  refer 
more  specifically  to  some  of  these  differentials.  ( i ) 
Christian  higher  education  has  pre-empted  the  field 
in  China.  A  glance  at  Dr.  Freyer's  Directory  of  1895, 
shows  how  completely  the  missions  controlled  the  field. 
Practically  the  mission  colleges  alone  could  furnish 
teachers  for  Chinese  schools.  The  Presbyterian  Col- 
lege at  Tungchow,  in  1898,  supplied  eight  professors 
to  the  Imperial  University  in  Peking,  and  four  to  that 
in  Nanking-,  and  these  were  staunch  Christian  men. 
The  plans  of  mission  work  in  China  should  be  such  as 
to  retain  and  not  forfeit  this  immense  advantage. 

(2)  The  Chinese  are  a  secularist  and  not  a  specu- 
lative people,  materialistic,  not  philosophical.  With 
them  ethics  and  physics,  and  not  metaphysics,  will  be 
of  dominant  interest.  There  is  peril  in  this,  and  also 
great  advantage.  The  experience  of  missionaries  in 
India  and  in  Japan  has  indicated  that  the  gospel  can 
break  into  materialistic  opposition,  whether  non-ethical 
or  ethical,  more  easily  than  into  philosophical  opposi- 
tion. To  be  sure  the  difference  is  partly  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  non-moral  character  of  Hindu  religious 
thought  which  lacks  the  inner  necessity  of  a  vinculum 
between  opinion  and  practice.  The  craving  of  the 
Chinese  for  science,  for  what  is  practical,  will  exer- 
cise a  powerful  warping  influence  both  for  good  and 
evil  on  our  educational  methods.  We  have  met  the 
Brahman  mind  on  ground  where  Christianity  was  sup- 
posed to  be  strongest,  namely,  on  the  ground  of  phil- 


238       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

osophy,  and  we  have  been  stayed.  It  would  be  inter- 
estins^  if  we  should  meet  the  Chinese  mind  on  ground 
where  the  supremacy  of  Christianity  has  been  most  se- 
verely challeng-ed,  namely,  its  relation  to  the  physical 
sciences,  and  win.  (3)  There  is  practically  no  dan- 
ger at  all  of  a  large  loss  of  results  of  the  higher  edu- 
cational work  in  China  through  the  emigration  of  edu- 
cated men,  as  has  been  the  case  in  Persia  and  Syria. 
The  majority  of  graduates  of  the  Urumia  College  in 
some  recent  years  have  come  to  the  United  States. 
Prior  to  1894,  the  Literary  Department  of  the  Beirut 
College  graduated  150  young  men.  One-sixth  of 
these  had  left  for  foreign  lands.  No  such  result  has 
followed  work  in  India  and  Japan,  and  it  will  not  fol- 
low in  China.  The  Chinese  nation  will  absorb,  as 
Persia  and  Syria  could  not  do,  these  nations  having 
under  Moslem  rule  practically  come  to  a  social  and  in- 
dustrial equilibrium,  the  entire  product  of  our  col- 
leges. The  whole  result  may  not  go  into  the  service 
of  the  Church,  but  it  will  all  go  into  the  service  of 
China.  (4)  The  teaching  of  English  is  one  cause 
of  this  exodus  of  educated  young  men  from  Syria  and 
Persia.  The  teaching  of  English  will  not  issue  so  in 
China.  Just  preceding  the  Boxer  Uprising,  there  was 
an  immense  demand  for  English.  With  the  opening 
of  positions  of  influence  under  the  government,  and 
the  demand  for  educated  men  in  all  lines  of  work 
throughout  the  country,  the  abnormal  call  for  English 
chiefly  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  employment  in  the 
open  ports  will  pass  away.  It  is  right  enough  to  take 
advantage  of  this  call,  provided  response  to  it  docs  not 
imperil  the  thorough  and  Christian  character  of  the 
education  given  in  our  colleges.  It  is  wrong  to  do  it 
at  sacrifice  of  the  direct  missionary  efficiency  of  our 
educational  work.     And  if  English  is  allowed  to  dis- 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  239 

place  Chinese  from  its  rightful  position,  great  evil 
will  be  done.  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  draws  a 
needed  lesson  in  this  matter,  from  the  situation  which 
Grant  Duff  described  as  existing  in  Madras  Presidency 
during  his  governorship.  "  This  picture,"  writes  Mr. 
Townsend,  "  that  of  a  population  of  thirty-one  millions 
in  which  the  class  most  eager  to  be  instructed,  is  when 
instructed  sterile,  is  a  painful  one,  and  will  be  held  by 
many  minds  to  justify  those,  of  whom  the  present 
writer  was  one,  who,  a  generation  ago,  bestirred  them- 
selves to  resist  the  idea  of  Macaulay,  that  culture 
should  be  diffused  in  India  through  English  studies. 
They  maintained  that  true  instruction  would  never 
be  gained  by  an  Oriental  people  through  a  Western 
language,  that  education  in  English  would  be  pro- 
ductive of  nothing  but  a  caste,  who,  like  the  '  scholars  ' 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  would  be  content  with  their  own 
superiority,  and  would  be  more  separated  from  the 
people  than  if  they  had  been  left  uneducated ;  that,  in 
short,  English  education,  however  far  it  might  be 
pushed,  would  remain  sterile.  They  pressed  for  the 
encouragement  and  development  of  the  indigenous  cul- 
ture, and  would  have  had  High  Schools  and  Uni- 
versities, in  which  men  should  have  studied,  first  of  all, 
to  perfect  the  languages,  and  literature,  and  knowl- 
edge of  their  own  land.  They  fought  hard,  but  they 
failed  utterly,  and  we  have  the  Babu,  instead  of  the 
thoroughly  instructed  Pundit.  They  probably  did  not 
allow  enough  for  the  influence  of  time,  and  they  cer- 
tainly did  not  admire  enough  the  few  remarkable  men 
whom  the  system  had  produced ;  but  so  far,  they  have 
been  right,  and  they  may  be  right  throughout.  Eng- 
lish education  in  India  may  remain  sterile  for  all  na- 
tional purposes."  No  tide  of  reform  should  lead  us 
to  forget  that  it  is  China  that  is  to  be  taught,  and  that 


240        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

it  is  still  to  be  China  after  it  is  taught.  (5)  Higher 
education  in  some  fields  has  bred  parasitism,  by  raising 
up  a  class  of  men  whom  mission  education  had  un- 
fitted for  agriculture  or  other  work  available  outside 
of  mission  employment.  "  What  would  you  have  had 
me  do?"  a  Nestorian  asked  me  the  other  day,  when 
I  asked  him  why  he  had  come  to  America.  "  The  mis- 
sion educated  me  so  that  I  could  not  go  back  and  be 
content  m  my  village,  and  it  had  no  work  to  give  me." 
In  India  the  result  has  been  the  same,  but  the  govern- 
ment has  done  the  thing  on  so  grand  a  scale  that  the 
work  of  the  mission  colleges  in  the  matter  is  dwarfed. 
Now,  this  will  not  be  the  result  in  China.  The  diffi- 
culty there  will  be  not  so  much  to  supply  mission  em- 
ployment for  the  best  educated  men,  but  to  hold  for 
mission  work  men  who  find  opportunities  for  lucrative 
work  or  for  influential  foreign  service  on  every  side. 
Furthermore,  this  higher  education  in  China  is  likely 
in  the  new  era  to  bring  into  the  Church  a  new  type 
of  Chinese  hitherto  little  touched  by  Christianity. — the 
stronger,  independent,  masterful  class.  The  problems 
of  self-support  and  of  native  ecclesiastical  independ- 
ence will  be  powerfully  affected  by  the  introduction  of 
this  class.  (6)  The  Chinese  are  less  exacting  over 
details  than  the  Japanese.  In  their  educational  insti- 
tutions it  is  probable  that  they  will  not  hunger  so  for 
German  bureaucratic  inquisitiveness  and  officiousness. 
They  will  probably  give  room  for  much  more  ag- 
gressive Christian  work  in  their  own  colleges,  and 
come  to  mission  colleges  with  less  aversion  to 
Christian  teaching  and  influence.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  Christian  education  will  not  for  the 
present  at  least  be  nagged  and  hedged  in  as 
the  Japanese  sought  to  worry  and  limit  it  in  1899. 
^y)     Higher  education  in  India  and  in  Japan,  in  the 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  241 

latter  almost  wholly  in  government  institutions,  has 
raised  up  a  keener  and  more  difficult  class  of  antag- 
onists. In  Japan  it  has  led  men  on  to  positions  in  ad- 
vance of  the  ground  of  advanced  thinkers  at  home. 
In  India  it  has  rehabilitated  the  old  religious  systems, 
stripped  them  of  what  is  gross  and  indefensible,  and 
enabled  men  to  conceive  their  old  religions  sufficiently 
in  the  terms  of  Christian  teaching  to  satisfy  their  con- 
sciences. It  is  true  that  education  demolishes  popular 
Hinduism,  but  it  entrenches  philosophic  Hinduism  in 
a  position  from  which  it  seems  impossible  to  dislodge 
it,  a  position  so  strong  that  its  defenders  press  out 
upon  the  aggressive,  and  carry  on  an  active  propa- 
ganda in  America.  Now,  higher  education  will  simply 
demolish  Chinese  Buddhism  and  Taoism.  Its  wrestle 
will  be  with  Confucianism.  It  may  be  maintained  that 
what  will  be  left  of  Confucianism  in  a  man  trained  in 
one  of  the  best  Christian  colleges  in  China,  will  not  be 
a  fraction  as  hostile  to  Christianity  or  as  difficult  of 
purification  by  it,  and  absorption  in  it,  as  what  re- 
mains of  Hinduism  in  the  educated  Vedantist  in  India. 
I  believe  that  with  one  exception  those  elements  of 
the  situation  in  China,  which  are  peculiar  and  differen- 
tiating, are  distinctly  favourable.  Perhaps  I  should 
even  admit  no  exception.  But  the  secular  character 
of  the  Chinese  warns  us  to  be  on  our  guard  lest  our 
education  become  commercial  and  materialistic;  or  if 
not  these,  lest  it  produce  a  cast  of  Christianity  of  an  in- 
tellectual and  moral  type,  devoid  of  deeper  religious 
note.  The  gospel  is  already  "  daoli,"  "  doctrine," 
with  the  Chinese,  a  body  of  objective  doctrine  rather 
than  an  inner  transformation.  Christ  is  the  Truth 
rather  than  the  Way  and  the  Life.  On  this  subject 
we  have  learned  some  things  elsewhere  that  ought  to 
be  of  help  to  us  in  China.     And  of  these,  the  chief 


242       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

is  that  missionary  education  should  be  thoroughly  and 
unqualifiedly  and  powerfully  Christian  education. 
This  was  what  it  was  under  Duff  in  Calcutta,  and  the 
results  were  manifest.  But  now  in  India  most  mis- 
sionaries are  so  absorbed  in  the  technical  educational 
work  that  the  evangelistic  character  of  the  education 
suft'ers.  Many  of  our  schools  in  India  are  not  carried 
on  "  as  efficiently,"  to  use  the  Rev.  Henry  Forman's 
words,  "  from  a  missionary  standpoint  as  they  are 
from  an  educational-department  point  of  view."  In 
consequence,  partly  only,  however,  because  of  this,  and 
partly  because  of  changed  conditions  like  those  due 
to  the  rise  of  the  Samajes  and  Vedantism,  missionary 
colleges  in  India  do  not  yield  the  direct  missionary 
results  they  once  did.  Dr.  Murdock  publishes,  in  his 
Indian  Missionary  Manual,  a  table  showing  that,  in 
the  different  missionary  institutions  in  Madras,  for  the 
years  1852-56,  there  were  39  baptisms ;  for  the  years 
1856-61,  there  were  10  baptisms;  for  the  years  1862- 
66,  there  were  5  baptisms;  and  for  the  years  1867-71, 
one  baptism.  To  atone  for  the  absorption  of  the  mis- 
sionary force  in  the  educational  side  of  the  work,  men 
like  Principal  Farquhar  and  Mr.  Brockway  have  ap- 
pealed for  educational  evangelists,  missionaries  who 
shall  be  attached  to  colleges  and  discharge  toward  the 
students  the  Christian  duties  which  the  educational  mis- 
sionaries are  neglecting  for  reasons  howsoever  good 
and  convincing.  It  is  far  better  to  have  each  teacher 
a  missionary  evangelist  to  his  students,  and  the  whole 
institution  permeated  through  and  through  with  ag- 
gressive effort  to  win  men  to  the  Christian  faith.  And 
no  emphasis  on  self-support  leading  to  the  introduction 
of  a  class  of  students  not  disposed  favourably  to  re- 
ligion can  justify  our  imperiling  the  real  missionary 
character  of  our  schools. 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  243 

We  have  learned  also  in  India,  the  danger  of  ma- 
terial and  secular  ends  in  mission  education.  As 
Principal  Miller  said  in  a  paper  on  "  Educational 
Agencies  in  Missions,"  read  at  the  Congress  of  Mis- 
sions in  Chicago  in  1893,  "  There  is  danger  that  the 
end  may  be  sacrificed  to  the  means.  There  is  danger — 
already  manifest  to  the  clearer-sighted — lest  advance- 
ment in  education  and  the  higher  position  to  which 
education  leads  become  the  sole,  or  chief,  objects  of 
desire  to  Christians.  The  Church  may  be  turned  into 
a  guild  for  the  worldly  welfare  of  its  sons.  Com- 
plaints are  pretty  often  made  which  are  really,  though 
perhaps  in  part  unconsciously,  based  on  the  idea  that 
the  Church  ought  to  be  a  guild  of  this  kind.  But  if 
this,  or  anything  like  this,  is  to  be  the  practical  result 
of  what  has  been  going  on  of  late,  it  would  be  better 
that  educational  progress  be  even  rudely  checked." 
These  general  perils  in  missionary  education  have  not 
been  so  escaped  in  India  as  to  have  enabled  us  to  se- 
cure from  our  colleges  the  native  workers  we  need. 
Very  few  of  the  graduates  of  our  higher  mission  in- 
stitutions have  entered  the  ministry  or  evangelistic 
work,  or  even  Christian  educational  work.  On  this 
account,  Principal  Allnutt  has  made  a  plea  for  a  new 
and  central  institution  from  which  such  results  might 
be  expected,  a  Christian  Training  College.  But  it  was 
to  provide  this  that  many  of  our  institutions  were  es- 
tablished in  the  first  place.  Yet  the  defect  at  this  point 
is  a  real  one.  The  higher  the  education  provided  by 
missions,  the  smaller  the  product  directly  available  for 
missionary  work.  The  only  way  to  meet  all  these  diffi- 
culties is  resolutely  to  refuse  to  subordinate  the  re- 
ligious to  the  secular  or  material,  to  aim  directly  at 
the  consciences  of  all  the  students  and  their  develop- 
ment into  Christian  leaders,  in  the  service  either  of 


244       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  mission,  or  of  the  native  Church,  or  as  independent 
professional  men  or  tradesmen  or  in  business.  Mr, 
Peet,  of  Foochow,  described  clearly  at  the  last  meeting 
of  the  Educational  Association  of  China,  what  this 
aim  of  our  education  should  be :  "  The  aim  of  our 
every  effort  should  be,  first  and  foremost,  to  give 
Christian  knowledge  to  those  who  come  as  students 
under  our  influence.  It  will  not  be  enough  that  we 
make  scholars  of  them, — that  we  place  them  in  posi- 
tions far  above  their  fellow-countrymen  in  their 
knowledge  of  mathematics  and  Western  sciences, — but 
we  should  aim  to  make  Christian  scholars.  It  seems 
to  me  that  as  Christian  missionaries  jt  is  not  only  our 
duty,  but  our  privilege,  to  make  this  the  one  aim  of 
all  education.  Such  an  aim  will  be  unpopular.  We 
need  not  expect  to  find  in  a  heathen  country  like  this, 
students  thirsting  after  Christianity.  Those  who  send 
their  sons  to  our  institutions  send  them  for  the  pur- 
pose of  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  mathematics.  West- 
ern sciences,  and  English, — things  which  have  a  com- 
mercial value.  To  them  Christianity  is  a  foreign  re- 
ligion, serving  the  same  ends  in  barbarian  countries 
as  Confucianism,  Buddhism,  and  Taoism  do  in  this, 
and  they  do  not  desire  its  introduction.  What  now  are 
we  to  do?  Shall  we  do  away  entirely  with  religious  in- 
struction? We  should  then  be  false  to  our  calling. 
Shall  we  take  a  moderate  view  of  the  matter, — give 
such  instruction  to  those  only  who  are  willing  to  re- 
ceive it  and  make  the  attendance  at  religious  exercises 
voluntary  on  the  part  of  the  students?  We  should 
then,  I  fear,  be  in  danger  of  giving  to  our  students 
the  impression  that  the  acceptance  of  Christianity  is, 
after  all,  not  a  matter  of  prime  importance. — that  it 
is  a  thing  of  little  consequence,  so  long  as  they  be- 
come scholars,  what  their  religious  beliefs  may  be. 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  245 

We  come  to  our  students  as  representatives  of  Chris- 
tianity. They  come  to  us — or  a  great  number  of  them 
do — as  beHevers  in  non-Christian  religions.  Let  us 
take  care  that  our  zeal  for  our  beliefs  be  not  over- 
shadowed by  their  zeal  for  their  beliefs.  I  heartily 
concur  in  the  statement  made  this  morning,  that  we 
must  take  care  not  to  nauseate  our  students  with  our 
religion.  But  it  seems  to  me  the  danger  lies  not  in  this 
direction,  but  in  the  opposite.  I  dare  say  there  is  not 
an  institution  represented  here  where  the  students  at 
the  present  time  stand  in  danger  of  getting  too  much 
religious  instruction.  I  maintain  that  the  Church  has 
in  its  grasp  a  mighty  power  for  good.  Let  us  take  care 
that  we  use  this  power  to  its  fullest  extent." 

There  is  opportunity  now  for  but  a  few  words  about 
some  of  the  practical  problems  of  the  educational  work 
in  China.  ( i )  Who  should  be  educated  ?  Not 
preachers  or  teachers  only.  The  college  should  send 
out  Christian  leaders  for  all  walks  of  life.  Not  Chris- 
tians, only,  for  the  college  can  be  a  powerful  evan- 
gelistic agency  to  bring  young  men  who  enter  it  as 
heathen  to  Christ,  and  if  some  of  these  who  enter  it 
as  heathen,  pass  through  it  and  are  not  won  to  open 
confession  of  faith,  they  may  still  be  useful  to  the 
mission  cause,  and  may  even  come  in  later  years  to 
the  faith  of  Christ.  But  two  things  need  to  be  guarded 
here.  (a)  No  pupils  should  be  allowed  to  pass 
through  our  colleges  whom  we  have  not  exhausted 
every  resource  to  win  to  Christ,  and  (b)  the  number  of 
non-Christian  pupils  should  not  be  such  as  to  give  tone 
to  the  school  or  to  imperil  its  Christian  influence.  (2) 
How  large  should  our  colleges  be?  That  will  depend 
upon  the  number  of  Christian  instructors.  The  best 
schools  for  boys  in  the  United  States  are  strictly  lim- 
ited in  numbers.     Groton  and  Hotchkiss  will  not  take 


246       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

more  than  150  boys,  and  they  provide  a  master  for  each 
ten  boys,  holding  that  a  head-master  can  not  ade- 
quately handle  more  than  150,  or  a  master  properly  in- 
fluence an  average  of  more  than  ten.  If  more  are 
taken,  it  is  at  the  expense  of  diminished  personal  con- 
trol and  of  that  influence  to  which  spiritual  results  are 
due.  (3)  How  much  education  should  be  given? 
As  much  as  is  required  to  produce  the  Christian  lead- 
ers needed  in  the  Church  and  country.  That  will 
mean  more  in  one  place  than  in  another,  and  more 
ten  years  from  now  than  now.  But  the  work  must 
be  thorough.  "  No  matter  how  great  may  be  the  re- 
ligious influence  brought  to  bear,"  says  the  Rev.  W. 
M.  Hayes,  D.D.,  one  of  the  best  educators  in  China,  "  or 
the  amount  of  religious  instruction  given,  unless  its 
graduates  are  fair  scholars,  a  school  will  not  command 
respect,  nor  will  its  influence  be  widely  felt."  (4) 
Should  this  education  be  given?  The  point  is  not 
"  that  in  a  mission  school  self-support  does  not  of 
itself  constitute  a  sufficient  reason  for  conforming  the 
course  of  study  to  the  commercial  demands  of  the 
hour."  That  is  an  obvious  truism.  The  point  is  that 
that  should  not  be  done  for  people  which  they  are  able 
to  do  and  should  do  for  themselves.  President  Had- 
ley,  in  his  inaugural  at  Yale,  declared  that  "  aid  in  edu- 
cation if  given  without  exacting  a  corresponding  re- 
turn becomes  demoralizing."  But  the  principle  is  not 
diflPerent  from  the  principle  in  life  elsewhere.  There 
may  be  many  cases  where  education  should  be  given 
with  absolute  freedom.  But  the  rule  should  certainly 
be  that  some  payment,  however  small,  should  be 
made  in  money  or  in  labour,  and  that  just  as 
large  a  portion  of  the  cost  of  the  education  should 
be  borne  by  the  people  as  can  be  laid  upon  tliem 
without     sacrificing  the   purposes   of    the   institution 


Higher  Education  in  Missions  247 

as  a  mission  agency.  (5)  Should  our  colleges  be 
organized  under  separate  Boards  of  Directors  in 
America,  independent  of  the  Mission  Boards,  or  be 
held  in  the  same  relation  to  the  Boards  which  other 
departments  of  the  work  sustain?  Experience  has 
shown  that  the  chief  advantage  of  the  former  course 
is  the  enlistment  of  the  interest  of  large  givers  through 
their  assumption  of  special  responsibility.  And  often 
this  has  not  been  secured.  Where  it  cannot  be,  the 
simple,  rational  and  effective  course  is  to  retain  the 
college  under  the  direct  control  of  the  Mission  Board. 
In  the  present  educational  situation  in  China,  the 
Mission  Boards  have  an  opportunity  which  it  is  not 
only  legitimate,  but  their  solemn  duty,  to  use.  It 
would  not  be  right  to  withdraw  men  from  direct  evan- 
gelistic work  to  put  them  in  schools,  but  it  would  be 
wrong  to  let  this  huge  power  slip  out  of  our  hands. 
At  the  same  time,  it  will  be  far  better  for  us  to  do  a 
little  of  this  work  perfectly,  than  a  great  deal  of  it  in- 
differently. It  will  be  a  greater  thing  to  develop  a 
thousand  thoroughly  qualified  men,  soHdly  trained, 
sincerely  converted,  to  lead  the  new  Church  and  the 
new  China,  than  ten  thousand  hastily  educated,  inade- 
quately equipped  men  in  whom  Christianity  has  not 
struck  deep,  and  who  will  come  sooner  or  later,  to  their 
place  in  hong  and  customs  house  and  subordinate 
clerkships.  To  do  this  greater  thing,  we  need  a  few 
schools  of  the  best  quality,  pervaded  and  utterly  domi- 
nated by  the  spirit  of  intense  devotion  and  evangelism. 


XX 

TRUTH  OR  TOLERANCE? 

AT  the  close  of  a  missionary  meeting  in  a  New 
Jersey  town  some  time  ago,  a  young  man 
came  up  to  me  and  asked :  "  Have  you  seen 
Bishop  Potter's  articles  in  The  Churchman  in 
which  he  defends  Hinduism  and  denies  the  charges 
made  against  it  by  missionaries  and  others?  They 
are  sure  to  do  harm,"  he  added.  "  A  lady  told  me  the 
other  day  that  they  represented  the  true  view.  When 
I  told  her  that  those  who  had  lived  in  India  did  not 
think  so,  she  replied  that  Bishop  Potter  was  a  great 
man,  and  could  see  in  a  month  what  others  could  not 
see  in  many  years."  I  think  this  young  man  over- 
estimated the  harm  to  missions  that  any  articles  of 
Bishop  Potter's  are  likely  to  do,  and  whether  they  harm 
the  mission  cause  or  not  is  a  secondary  question.  If 
Bishop  Potter's  view  of  Hinduism  is  correct  and  harm- 
ful to  missions,  so  much  the  worse  for  missions.  The 
question  is  not  as  to  the  effect,  but  as  to  the  reliability 
of  Bishop  Potter's  representation. 

On  the  face  of  it.  Bishop  Potter's  view  seems  large- 
minded  and  tolerant,  just  such  a  view  as  any  man 
would  like  to  take.  No  one  surely  can  find  any  pleas- 
ure in  condemning  the  opinions  and  practices  of  his 
fellow-creatures.  Every  Christian  man  must  want  to 
discover  all  the  good  he  can  in  the  non-Christian  re- 
ligions and  people.  And  that  there  is  good,  surely 
no  one  will  deny.  Bishop  Potter  exaggerates  the 
amount  of  narrowness  and  uncharitableness  with 
which  the  mass  of  people  view  the  Eastern  religions. 
Indeed,  most  people  think  they  are  good  enough. 

248 


Truth  or  Tolerance  ?  249 

But  no  amount  of  desire  to  be  charitable  and  large- 
minded  can  justify  neglect  of  facts.  I  shall  call  at- 
tention to  some  things  which  were  not  brought  to 
Bishop  Potter's  notice  in  India,  and  which  have  evi- 
dently escaped  his  thought  in  reading  about  the  Hindu 
people  and  their  religion.  It  is  surprising  that  these 
things  have  escaped  Bishop  Potter's  attention,  and  it 
is  unfortunate  on  many  accounts.  It  is  the  more  sur- 
prising, because  the  issue  on  which  he  has  compared 
Hinduism  and  Christianity  is  the  very  one  on  which 
it  is  almost  inconceivable  that  he  should  have  failed 
to  get  fairly  accurate  information,  and  the  one,  fur- 
thermore, on  which  comparison  is  most  damaging  to 
Hinduism. 

At  first  sight,  Bishop  Potter's  information  seems 
unimpeachable.  Pie  appeals  to  his  knowledge  of  the 
family  life  of  those  in  whose  homes  he  was  enter- 
tained, and  who  gave  him  chapter  and  verse  in  their 
sacred  writings  for  what  they  told  him,  and  then  he 
proceeds  to  quote  from  their  testimonies.  Bishop 
Potter's  hosts  were,  as  he  says,  Buddhist,  Mohamme- 
dan and  Parsee.  The  sacred  writings  from  which  he 
quotes  are  the  laws  of  Manu.  How  Bishop  Potter 
came  to  make  such  a  curious  slip  is  unintelligible. 
What  do  Buddhists,  Mohammedans  and  Parsees  have 
to  do  with  or  care  for  the  laws  of  Manu?  They  are 
Hindu  documents,  having  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  life  or  customs  of  Buddhists,  Mohammedans 
or  Parsees. 

Furthermore,  Bishop  Potter  says  in  his  articles  that 
from  the  laws  of  Manu  he  takes  those  "  laws  which 
define  the  place  of  woman  in  the  economy  of  East- 
Indian  life,"  and  he  quotes  eight  sentences  represent- 
ing a  worthy  view  of  woman.  He  does  not  indicate 
that  there  are  any  laws  of  a  contrary  character.    The 


250       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sentences  quoted  give  a  misleading  and  untrue  im- 
pression as  to  the  legislation  of  ]\Ianu  regarding 
woman.  That  legislation  is  utterly  one-sided  and 
its  tenor  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  Bishop  Potter's 
representation.  Woman  is  set  by  it  in  the  place  of 
complete  subjection,  and  the  prevailing  ideal  is  con- 
temptuous :  "  Woman  is  unv^orthy  of  confidence,  and 
the  slave  of  passion."  "  One  should  not  eat  with  his 
wife."  "  Whether  of  bad  conduct  or  debauched,  or 
even  devoid  of  good  qualities,  a  husband  must  always 
be  served  like  a  god  by  a  good  wife."  "  Day  and 
night  should  women  be  kept  by  the  male  members  of 
the  family  in  a  state  of  dependence."  "  It  is  the 
nature  of  women  in  this  world  to  cause  men  to  sin." 
A  later  code  declares,  "  A  woman  is  not  to  be  relied 
on."  Bishop  Potter  has  appealed  from  the  practice 
of  the  people  to  their  laws.  The  appeal  does  not  jus- 
tify the  implication  of  his  article  that  the  current  repre- 
sentation of  the  inferior  position  of  woman  in  India 
is  incorrect.  If  he  had  gathered  in  India  the  proverbs 
of  the  people  about  woman,  he  would  have  seen  clearly 
the  unworthiness  of  the  national  conception.  Take 
these  Tamil  proverbs  as  illustration : 

"  What  is  that  poison  which  appears  like  nectar  ? 
Woman." 

"  What  is  the  chief  gate  to  hell  ?     Woman." 

"  What  is  cruel  ?  The  heart  of  a  viper.  What  is 
more  cruel?  The  heart  of  a  woman.  What  is  most 
cruel  of  all?  The  heart  of  a  soulless,  penniless 
widow." 

"  He  is  a  fool  who  considers  his  wife  as  his 
friend." 

"  Educating  a  woman  is  like  putting  a  knife  into 
the  hands  of  a  monkey." 

Bishop   Potter   makes   mention   of  child   marriage, 


Truth  or  Tolerance?  251 

Suttee,  or  widow-burning,  and  the  ignorance  and  se- 
clusion of  women  in  India  as  traditions,  in  which  he 
and  the  rest  of  us  were  brought  up,  and  says  that  our 
popular  impressions  of  them  are  often  grotesque  dis- 
tortions or  exaggerations  of  the  facts.  And  he  quotes 
with  approval  Swami  Abhedananda,  who  has  been 
lecturing  in  Carnegie  Hall.  It  may  be  that  there  are 
wrong  notions  on  these  subjects  in  America,  but  the 
facts  are  bad  enough. 

First,  as  to  Suttee,  Bishop  Potter  quotes  Abheda- 
nanda as  declaring  that  "  the  self-burning  of  widows 
was  not  sanctioned  by  the  Hindu  religion,  but  was 
due  to  other  causes,  the  fact  being  that  when  Moham- 
medans conquered  India  they  treated  the  widows  of 
the  soldiers  so  brutally  that  the  women  preferred 
death,  and  voluntarily  sought  it.  It  is  often  said 
that  tlie  '  Christian  government '  has  suppressed  '  Sut- 
tee ; '  but  the  truth  is  that  the  initiative  in  this  direc- 
tion was  taken  by  that  noble  Hindu,  Ram  Mohun 
Roy,  who  was,  however,  obliged  to  secure  the  aid  of 
the  British  Government  in  enforcing  his  ideas,  be- 
cause India  was  a  subject  nation.  .  .  .  The  evil 
was  practically  suppressed  by  the  Hindus  themselves, 
aided  by  the  British  Government."  There  are  five 
misleading  statements  here.  Bishop  Potter  says  he 
has  not  heard  them  challenged,  but  that  must  be 
because  he  has  not  found  opportunity  to  read  ex- 
tensively about  India.  The  facts  are  (i)  that  while 
the  early  Aryans  were  not  guilty  of  widow-burning, 
it  became  a  real  part  of  the  Hindu  religious  system. 
It  was  declared  "  as  long  as  a  woman  shall  not  burn 
herself  after  the  death  of  her  husband,  she  shall  be 
subject  to  transmigration  in  a  female  form."  In  the 
code  of  Hindu  laws  drawn  up  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury  for  the  guidance  of  judges,  it  is  said :   "  It  is 


252       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

proper  for  a  woman  after  her  husband's  death  to  burn 
herself  with  his  corpse.  Every  woman  who  thus  bums 
herself  shall  remain  in  Paradise  with  her  husband 
350,000,000  of  years  of  destiny."  (2)  The  claim  that 
it  was  due  to  the  cruelty  of  the  Mohammedans  is 
nonsense,  totally  unsupported  by  historical  evidence. 
Widow-burning  was  practiced  in  India  centuries  be- 
fore Mohammed  was  born,  while  "  the  Mohammedan 
rulers,"  says  the  Abbe  Dubois  in  Hindu  Manners, 
Customs  and  Ceremonies,  "  never  tolerated  this  hor- 
rible practice  in  the  provinces  subject  to  them."  (3) 
The  agitation  for  the  abolition  of  Suttee  was  begun 
by  Carey  and  his  fellow-missionaries.  Their  protest 
was  the  first  official  notice  regarding  Suttee  ever 
placed  on  the  records  of  the  Government.  In  twenty- 
five  years  there  were  70,000  cases  of  widow-burning. 
At  last,  in  1829,  Lord  William  Bentinck  abolished  it. 
(4)  The  Hindu  people  and  priests  bitterly  opposed 
its  abolition.  They  got  up  a  petition  signed,  if  Mrs. 
Fuller's  statement  is  correct,  by  18,000  people  con- 
tending "  that  the  act  of  the  Suttee  was  not  only  a 
sacred  duty,  but  an  exalted  privilege,  denouncing  the 
prohibition  as  a  breach  of  the  promise  that  there  should 
be  no  interference  with  the  religious  customs  of  the 
Hindus,  and  begging  for  its  restoration."  (5)  Ram 
Mohun  Roy  did  render  great  service  in  the  matter. 
He  opposed  the  practice  in  India,  and  he  was  in  Eng- 
land when  this  memorial  of  the  Hindus  was  presented, 
and  gave  his  influence  to  secure  the  affirmation  of 
Lord  William.  Bentinck's  act  of  abolition  by  the  Gov- 
ernment in  London.  But  Ram  Mohun  Roy  was  a 
rebel  against  orthodox  Hindu  custom.  It  is  ludicrous 
to  anyone  who  knows  the  history  of  Hindu  reform 
to  credit  Hinduism  with  the  revolutionary  protests  of 
Ram    Mohun   Roy   against   the   abuses    and   wrongs 


Truth  or  Tolerance  ?  253 

which  had  become  lodged  in  it.  Ram  Mohun  Roy's 
attitude  was  the  result  of  Christianity  and  Christian 
missions. 

Second,  as  to  child  marriage  and  the  condition  of 
widows.  Bishop  Potter  quotes  as  reliable  Abhedanan- 
da's  declarations  that  Hinduism  distinctly  forbids  child 
marriage,  that  "  in  many  parts  of  India "  it  is  only 
betrothal,  and  that  the  Hindu  law  does  not  prevent 
the  marriage  of  the  betrothed  wife  after  the  death  of 
the  betrothed  husband.  Abhedananda  admits  that 
"  many  abuses  have  crept  in,  and  child-wives  are 
often  given  to  their  husbands  at  too  early  an  age." 
As  we  listen  to  Bishop  Potter's  alteram  partem  in  this 
matter,  he  seems  to  acknowledge  all  that  many  "  tra- 
ditions "  at  least  have  included  on  this  subject.  But 
Abhedananda's  admission  is  true,  and  his  other  dec- 
larations are  not.  (i)  The  laws  of  Manu  declare, 
"  At  thirty  years  of  age  a  man  may  marry  a  beloved 
girl  of  twelve  years,  or  if  he  is  thrice  eight  years,  he 
may  marry  a  girl  of  eight  years."  Gautama's  Insti- 
tute of  the  Sacred  Law  declares :  "  A  girl  should  be 
given  in  marriage  before  she  attains  the  age  of  pu- 
berty. He  who  neglects  it  commits  sin."  The  Day- 
abhaga  declares :  "  A  girl  should  be  given  in  marriage 
before  her  breasts  swell."  These  passages  are  all 
cited  in  The  Women  of  India,  a  book  to  which  Bishop 
Potter  seems  to  have  had  access,  for  he  quotes  a  long 
passage  from  it  immediately  after  his  citation  on  this 
subject  from  Swami  Abhedananda.  It  ought  perhaps 
to  be  noted  that  Bishop  Potter  says  of  his  quotation 
from  The  Women  of  India,  "  the  following  remarks 
are  abridged  from  The  Women  of  India."  On  the 
contrary,  he  quotes  without  any  abridgment.  The  pas- 
sage, however,  is  introduced  in  The  Women  of  India 
with    the    statement :    "  The    following    remarks    are 


254       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

abridged  from  the  Rev.  T.  E.  Slater."  It  is  a  tri- 
fling thing,  but  Bishop  Potter  has  not  been  care- 
ful in  these  articles  either  in  small  matters  or 
great.  (2)  Early  marriage  is  not  simply  early 
betrothal.  It  is  that  sometimes.  But  the  hor- 
rors of  child  marriage  have  existed  and  do  exist. 
The  Hon.  Mohendra  Lai  Sircar,  M.D.,  testified 
that  from  his  medical  observation  during  thirty 
years  he  believed  "  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  Hindu 
women  died  prematurely  through  early  marriage, 
twenty-five  per  cent,  more  were  invalided  by  the  same 
cause,  and  the  vast  majority  of  the  remainder  suflfered 
in  health  from  it."  Did  Bishop  Potter  never  hear  of 
the  terrible  memorial  presented  to  the  British  Gov- 
ernment in  India  ten  years  ago  by  fifty-five  women 
doctors  who  told  what  they  knew  on  this  subject,  or 
does  he  not  believe  them ?  "I  look  upon  the  system 
of  child  marriage,"  says  Mr.  IMunmohan  Ghose,  "  as 
the  greatest  curse  of  our  country."  (3)  It  is  true  that 
the  Vedas  do  not  prohibit  widow  marriage,  but  Manu 
says  it  is  unlawful  for  a  woman  to  mention  the  name 
of  another  man  after  her  husband's  death;  and  later 
custom  and  religious  legislation  have  forbidden  the 
remarriage  of  widows,  and  the  act  of  Lord  Canning 
in  1856  legalizing  it,  proved  a  dead  letter.  The  widow 
who  remarries  forfeits  all  property  inherited  from  her 
husband  "  as  if  she  had  then  died,"  and  she  goes  in 
the  face  of  the  terrible  condemnation  of  orthodox 
Hindu  opinion.  And  the  lot  of  the  Hindu  widow  is  so 
pitiable  and  appealing  that  it  is  hard  to  read  Bishop 
Potter's  light  and  authoritative  dismissal  of  the  "  tra- 
ditions "  regarding  her.  Perhaps  it  may  be  allowable 
to  set  in  opposition  to  his  easy  judgment  the  words 
of  Iswar  Chandra  Vidyasagar.  who  spoke  with  pas- 
sion to  be  sure,  and  not  without  exaggeration,  but 


Truth  or  Tolerance  ?  255 

with  a  life-long  knowledge  of  what  he  spoke  about : 
"  An  adequate  idea  of  the  intolerable  hardships  of 
early  widowhood  can  be  formed  by  those  only  whose 
daughters,  sisters,  daughters-in-law  and  other  female 
relations  have  been  deprived  of  their  husbands  during 
infancy.  When  men  are  void  of  pity  and  compassion, 
of  a  perception  of  right  and  wrong,  of  good  and  evil, 
and  when  men  consider  the  observance  of  mere  forms 
as  the  highest  of  duties  and  the  greatest  of  virtues,  in 
such  a  country  would  that  women  were  never  born! 
Woman !  in  India  thy  lot  is  cast  in  misery !  " 

Third,  as  to  the  seclusion  and  ignorance  of  women. 
Bishop  Potter  calls  these  also  a  tradition  about  which 
our  popular  impressions  are  grotesque  and  exagger- 
ated. Well,  what  are  the  facts?  According  to  the 
census  of  1891,  the  illiterate  females  were  99.52  of 
the  total  female  population.  It  is  simply  trifling  to 
speak  of  being  entertained  in  fine  Parsee  homes  as 
an  offset  to  these  facts  of  ignorance  among  Hindu 
women.  The  Parsees  are  absolutely  distinct.  "  There 
is  obviously  no  analogy  between  their  case,"  says  The 
India  Census  Report,  "  and  that  of  a  vast  and  hetero- 
geneous population  that  has  grown  up  within  the 
country  itself  and  has  by  gradual  and  historical  pro- 
cess, not  by  imitation  or  foreign  impulse,  hemmed 
itself  in  by  centuries  of  the  most  exclusive  prejudice 
and  invincible  custom  the  world  has  ever  seen."  I 
doubt  if  anyone  is  more  astonished  or  indignant  at 
Bishop  Potter's  articles  than  Miss  Sorabji,  a  daughter 
of  a  famous  Parsee  family  in  Bombay,  now  in  Amer- 
ica. And  as  for  the  character  of  the  seclusion  of 
women,  Keshub  Chunder  Sen's  testimony  is  not  to 
be  brushed  away  so  cavalierly.  "  Look  at  yourselves, 
enchained  to  customs,  deprived  of  freedom,  lorded 
over  by  an  ignorant  and  crafty  priesthood,  your  better 


256       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sense  and  better  feelings  all  smothered  under  the 
crushing  weight  of  custom.  Look  at  your  homes, 
scenes  of  indescribable  misery ;  your  wives  and  sisters, 
your  mothers  and  daughters,  immured  within  the 
dungeon  of  the  zenana ;  ignorant  of  the  outside  world, 
Httle  better  than  slaves,  whose  charter  of  liberty  of 
thought  and  action  has  been  ignored."  Of  course 
Keshub  Chunder  Sen  was  a  reformer,  and  his  speech 
is  Oriental,  but  Mr.  Kipling  is  scarcely  calmer. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  Bishop  Potter  did  not  meet 
Ramabai.  An  article  on  the  position  of  woman  in 
India  that  does  not  mention  Ramabai,  but  cites  Swami 
Abhedananda  as  chief  witness,  is,  to  say  the  least, 
curious.  But  Bishop  Potter  has  in  these  articles  a 
strange  taste  in  selecting  witnesses.  Isaac  Taylor,  who 
is  his  sole  witness  on  Islam,  was  thoroughly  discredited 
within  a  year  after  the  appearance  of  his  astonishing 
attacks  on  Christian  Missions  to  Mohammedans,  and  on 
the  Church  Missionary  Society.  Regarding  Islam,  how- 
ever. Bishop  Potter  on  his  own  authority  declares 
that,  "  Mohammedanism  in  Oriental  lands  does  con- 
trol the  vice  of  drunkenness."  Alas,  it  does  not.  As  the 
Evening  Post  said  in  a  recent  review :  "  No  student 
of  Moslem  history  and  literature  can  have  failed  to  see 
how  dead  a  letter  is  the  statute  against  the  use  of 
intoxicating  drink.  The  passages  in  the  Koran  sup- 
posed to  forbid  it  are  ambiguous,  and  the  legal  praxis 
is  so  arranged  that  a  conviction  is  next  to  impossible. 
For  example,  the  addition  of  water  to  wine  makes  it 
legal."  Persia  and  Turkey  are  full  of  evidence  that 
flatly  contradicts  Bishop  Potter.  The  saloons  of 
Teheran  were  once  ordered  by  the  Shah  to  close.  But 
who  secured  the  order?  Mohammedan  mollahs? 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  It  was  accompUshed  by  one  Christian 
missionary. 


Truth  or  Tolerance?  257 

I  venture  to  add  a  word  of  protest  against  the  easy 
reply  that  may  be  made  to  attempts  to  get  at  the  truth 
in  this  matter.  Prejudice  may  be  charged.  But  that 
is  an  unfair  reply.  It  is  not  prejudice  to  seek 
the  exact  truth.  Of  course  one  is  tempted  in  these 
days  to  take  a  generous,  large-minded  and  tolerant 
attitude  toward  contrary  opinion  and  practice.  But 
after  all,  inaccuracy  and  superficiality  of  judgment 
is  not  large-minded.  The  only  worthy  judgment  is 
the  judgment  that  is  true  and  just,  and  that,  while 
kind  and  pitiful,  will  not  slur  over  the  truth  or  dis- 
believe it  because  it  is  unpleasant. 

The  right  attitude  and  judgment  for  us  as  Chris- 
tians to  take  toward  the  non-Christian  religions  has 
already  been  discussed.  But  one  point  of  radical  dis- 
tinction between  Hinduism  and  Christianity  which  is 
not  noted  in  Bishop  Potter's  papers  should  be  men- 
tioned again.  Indeed,  Bishop  Potter  by  implication 
denies  it,  when  he  deprecates  our  judgment  of  Hindu- 
ism by  its  degraded  practice,  and  calls  us  back  to  one- 
sided quotations  from  sacred  books.  Truly  every 
religion  should  be  judged  by  its  best  as  well  as  its 
worst.  But  the  worst  of  Hinduism  is  sanctioned  and 
sanctified  in  its  sacred  books.  Its  vilest  practices 
are  in  the  name  and  under  the  formal  approval  of 
religion.  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  once  testified  before 
a  Parliamentary  Committee  that  when,  with  some 
others,  he  joined  to  form  a  society  to  put  down  cruel 
native  practices,  and  they  went  into  the  subject,  they 
found  "  that  all  these  practices  were  so  mixed  up  with 
the  Hindu  religious  system,  and  grew  so  directly  out 
of  it,  that  nothing  short  of  the  conversion  of  the 
natives  to  Christianity  would  effect  any  real  moral 
change."  Here  our  religion  sand  ions  no  moral  evil 
or  wrong.     The  worst  of  India  is  its  religion.     The 


258        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

best  of  America  is  its  religion.  To  compare  the  two, 
as  is  done  in  the  articles  under  review,  is  misleading 
and  unjust.  The  view  which  these  articles  present  is 
not  a  true  view.  And  truth  is  the  supreme  thing. 
Whether  it  is  fatal  to  Christian  missions  on  one  side, 
or  to  an  easy-going  and  unstudying  tolerance  on  the 
other  is  of  little  consequence.  What  is  the  truth? 
In  his  goodness  of  heart  toward  what  he  thinks  has 
been  misjudged,  and  in  his  own  superficial  judgment 
of  "  India,  its  People  and  its  Religions,"  Bishop  Potter 
unwittingly  missed  an  opportunity  to  serve  the  truth, 
and  equally  unwittingly  has  ministered  to  error. 


XXI 

SOME    MISSIONARY    ASPECTS    OF    PAUL'S   FIRST 
ITINERATION 

1  BECAUSE  the  missionary  spirit  was  in  the 
Antioch  church  missionaries  went  out  from  it. 
And  the  effect  of  their  going  was  surely  a 
•  deepening  of  interest  in  the  church  (Acts 
xiv.  27).  It  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  the 
missionary  movement  originated  here.  The  great 
evangelization  which  resulted  from  the  scattering 
of  Christians  after  the  death  of  Stephen,  confined 
itself  to  Jews  until  it  came  to  Antioch.  There  the 
gospel  was  offered  to  Greeks  also.  How  could  these 
Greeks  feel  the  joys  of  the  gospel  without  desiring 
to  see  it  spread  among  Greeks  generally,  and  with- 
out feeling  an  obligation  to  spread  it?  The  modem 
evasions  and  sophistries,  the  "  Corban "  devices  of 
to-day,  had  not  been  invented  yet,  and  the  funda- 
mental immorality  of  an  un-missionary  church  was 
an  undiscussed  axiom  to  sincere  believers.  Further- 
more, Barnabas  was  fortunately  sent  from  Jerusalem 
to  examine  the  new  movement,  and  he  was  not  of  the 
timid  and  reluctant  temper.  He  joyfully  fed  the 
warmth  of  the  Greek  believers  in  Antioch.  Once 
again,  it  is  evident  that  this  church  from  the  outset 
made  a  great  deal  of  Christ.  Here  first  the  name 
was  fixed  upon  believers.  Where  men  made  so  much 
of  Him,  there  was  sure  to  be  a  missionary  outburst. 
The  home  life  of  the  Antioch  church,  also,  seems  to 
have  been  organized  on  foundations  of  wide  sympathy. 
The  list  of  prophets  and  teachers  appears  to  indicate 
an  absence  of  those  social  and  racial  prejudices  (Acts 

259 


26o       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

xiii.  i)  which  always  kill  the  missionary  spirit.  Add 
to  this,  that  the  Antioch  Christians  were  given  to  fast- 
ing and  prayer,  and  we  have  the  condition  in  which 
the  missionary  call  and  the  voice  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
saying,  "  Separate  me  my  men,"  a  call  and  a  voice 
always  sounding  but  not  always  heard,  could  be  dis- 
cerned and  would  be  obeyed.  The  beginning  of  mis- 
sions confirms  the  experience  of  missions  in  all  ages. 
Given  a  missionary  church  or  body  of  believers,  and 
a  foreign  mission  is  the  inevitable  consequence.  If 
the  mission,  ,or  an  attempt  at  it,  is  lacking,  it  is  proof 
that  the  Spirit  is  lacking  in  the  church. 

2.  The  money  problem  is  not  mentioned,  nor  is  any- 
thing said  of  organization.  God  and  men,  men  and 
God — that  is  all.  That  is  always  all.  Money  and 
machinery  are  secondary  to-day  as  they  were  then. 
We  are  guilty  of  distortion  and  distrust  and  atheism 
when  we  put  them  first.  But  simple  as  was  the  send- 
ing out  of  these  first  missionaries,  it  does  not  follow 
that  now  the  wise  thing  is  for  each  local  church  to 
act  in  the  independent  fashion  of  the  church  at  Anti- 
och. and  select  and  commission  and  send  out  its  own 
representatives.  It  would  be  easy  to  relate  stories 
of  the  dismal  failure  and  wrong  of  some  experiments 
of  this  sort.  In  our  sense  of  words,  this  first  foreign 
mission  was  not  a  foreign  mission  at  all.  The  mis- 
sionaries went  among  their  own  people.  They  never 
went  out  of  the  bounds  of  their  own  government,  and 
they  learned  no  new  language,  tried  no  new  climate, 
touched  no  foreign  land.  It  was  a  deputation  rather 
than  a  mission.  The  real  lesson  for  us  is  not  a  lesson 
of  rigid  method,  but  a  suggestion  of  principle,  namely, 
that  by  the  methods  which  experience  has  approved, 
each  church  should  be  in  vital  contact  with  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  and  participating  in  it.    The  method 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  First  Itineration    261 

of  the  sending  forth  of  these  first  missionaries  is  not 
a  reflection  on  modern  missionary  organizations.  It 
is  significant  that  those  societies  and  missions  which 
seem  to  emphasize  most  the  call  of  the  Spirit,  are 
the  most  highly  organized  and  the  most  authoritatively 
governed. 

3.  This  itineration  was  a  modest  venture,  a  pre- 
liminary trial,  a  testing  of  wings.  The  missionaries 
turned  first  naturally  to  territory  which  Barnabas 
knew.  He  had  lived  in  Cyprus,  owned  property  there, 
and  personally  possessed  influence  that  made  their 
visit  to  the  island  a  matter  of  no  great  risk.  Here 
they  went  first  to  Jews,  as  had  been  and  was  still  to 
be  for  some  time  the  almost  invariable  evangelistic 
rule.  Even  on  this  trip,  however,  a  gleam  of  the 
wider  mission  came  to  them.  The  Jews  came  first 
of  necessity,  the  missionaries  felt  and  said  that  they 
felt,  but  the  gospel  was  for  Gentiles  too  (Acts  xiii. 
46,  47).  And  when  they  reported  to  the  home  church 
on  their  return,  the  dominant  impression  of  the  itinera- 
tion evidently  was  that  God  "  had  opened  a  door  of 
faith  unto  the  Gentiles"  (Acts  xiv.  27).  The  mission 
revealed  itself,  and  fed  the  spirit  which  had  created  it. 

4.  The  missionaries  moved.  It  had  required  per- 
secution to  stir  up  the  Jerusalem  believers.  But  now 
men  had  been  raised  up  with  the  spirit  of  the  great 
commission  in  their  blood.  They  were  going  men. 
If  rejected,  they  went  on  (Acts  xiii.  50,  51).  They 
were  not  afraid  of  persecution.  They  took  it  when 
it  came  in  the  line  of  their  duty,  but  also  they  had 
no  hesitation  in  running  away  from  it  (Acts  xiv.  5).  If 
it  was  necessary  to  be  beaten,  they  bore  it  joyfully;  but 
Paul  had  no  principle  against  going  down  over 
walls  to  escape  danger  (Acts  ix.  25),  or  leaving 
places  which  were  too  hot.     Still,  they  came  right 


262       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

back  to  these  places  on  this  trip.  If  they  fled,  it  was 
not  from  fear,  and  if  they  returned,  it  was  not  from 
hardihood.  They  went  in  the  way  of  duty.  That 
was  all.  If  missionaries  in  China  could  do  no  j:^ood 
by  staying  in  interior  towns  during  the  Boxer  troubles, 
and  only  imperilled  the  Chinese  converts  by  remain- 
ing, it  was  their  duty,  following  Paul's  example,  to 
leave.  If  their  remaining  at  their  post  and  accepting 
death  would  have  helped  the  cause,  they  would  have 
done  right  to  stay,  and  those  who  did  stay,  did  what 
Paul  would  have  done  in  their  place. 

5.  The  missionaries  did  not  move  just  for  the  sake 
of  moving.  Itineration  with  them  was  not  mere  travel 
or  sight-seeing.  It  was  hard,  well-directed  preach- 
ing. To  do  this  work  thoroughly  they  retraced  their 
steps  (Acts  xiv.  21)  even  to  Lystra  and  Iconium, 
where  they  had  been  rejected,  and  whence  they  had 
fled.  Those  missionaries  in  China  who  after  the 
troubles  returned  to  their  stations,  some  of  them  be- 
fore even  the  consuls  were  ready  to  encourage  them, 
also  were  following  Paul's  example.  On  this  itinera- 
tion the  missionaries  did  more  than  just  "  herald " 
the  gospel.  They  organized  the  believers.  The  or- 
ganization was  very  flexible  and  simple.  No  priests 
were  set  over  the  little  companies  to  exercise  authority 
by  virtue  of  apostolic  succession.  All  was  life  and 
motion  and  freedom.  Neither  did  Barnabas  and  Paul 
employ  a  helper  and  place  him  over  the  group.  They 
hit  upon  a  perfectly  simple,  natural,  self-supporting 
arrangement,  designed  to  secure  liberty,  growth  and 
the  sense  of  responsibility.  Fuller  developments  would 
come  later,  but  this  was  enough  for  the  beginning. 
Perhaps  if  Paul  had  had  no  results  of  his  work  he 
might  have  employed  a  different  method.  But  he  had 
results,  and  this  was  the  way  he  took  care  of  them. 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  First  Itineration    16^ 

6.  The  sole  reliance  of  the  missionaries  was  the 
gospel  (Acts  xiv.  21).  They  had  absolutely  no  ul- 
terior inducements  to  offer.  No  social,  educational 
or  philanthropic  advantages  had  been  evolved  which 
could  act  as  attractions  to  draw  the  people  toward 
Christianity.  It  was  not  yet  a  proscribed  religion. 
Its  relation  to  the  government  and  the  imperial  court 
had  not  been  defined.  But  if  not  under  the  ban,  there 
was  nothing  to  commend  it  but  its  spiritual  efficiency 
and  its  response  to  the  deepest  needs  of  human  hearts. 
Paul  did  some  signs  and  wonders  (Acts  xiv.  3,  10; 
xiii.  11),  but  one  of  them  made  them  more  trouble 
than  it  did  good,  and  on  the  contrary  side  he  assured 
believers  that  tribulation  was  in  store  for  them  (Acts 
xiv.  22).  Many  a  modern  missionary  has  wished  that 
he  was  as  free  from  the  financial,  political  and  social 
entanglements  of  Christianity  in  his  enterprise,  that 
he  might  deal  with  men  on  spiritual  ground  alone. 
The  penalty  of  the  long  postponement  of  the  evangeli- 
zation of  the  world  is  twofold — (i)  the  social  and 
racial  chasm  between  Christians  and  heathen  has  be- 
come terrible  in  its  width  and  depth  and  permanence, 
and  (2)  Christianity  has  come  to  terms  with  culture, 
commerce  and  politics,  so  that  it  is  well-nigh  im- 
possible to  disengage  it  and  present  it  to  the  world 
as  Paul  was  free  to  present  it  to  Gentile  and  Jew  in 
the  first  generation. 

7.  Moreover,  the  preparation  of  the  Jews  for  Chris- 
tianity had  been  as  well  done  as  could  be — where  the 
condition  was  the  resultant  of  the  forces  of  the  loving 
will  of  God  and  the  recalcitrant  and  obstinate  obdur- 
acy of  Israel.  There  was,  however,  an  audience 
ready,  a  place  provided  for  Christianity  to  take  hold 
(Acts  xiii.  14,  15,  43,  44;  xiv.  t).  On  the  other  hand, 
it  was   from  the  Jews   also  that  the  first  opposition 


264       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

came  (Acts  xiii.  45,  50;  xiv.  2,  5,  19),  The  uncer- 
tainties of  the  situation,  the  experimental  nature  of 
the  work  among  both  Jews  and  Gentiles,  accounts  for 
the  fact  that  the  message  to  both  (Acts  xiii.  16-41 ; 
xiv.  15-17)  was  less  sharp  and  cleanly  adaptive  than 
it  soon  became. 

8.  A  noble  picture  of  true  missionary  wisdom  and 
consecration  is  presented  in  the  course  of  Barnabas. 
As  he  and  Paul  met  their  new  problems  and  did  their 
new  work,  the  older  man  began  to  shift  the  responsi- 
bilities to  the  shoulders  of  the  younger,  whose  ca- 
pacities he  had  long  before  foreseen.  He  pushes  him 
forward,  does  not  quarrel  with  his  growing  promi- 
nence, happily  slips  into  the  second  place  after  their 
visit  to  Antioch  in  Pisidia,  and  finds  his  joy  in  the 
increasing  power  of  Paul.  Here  is  the  picture  of  a 
large-natured,  fine-spirited,  sagacious  man,  doing  the 
greatest  work  of  his  life  in  developing  Paul  and  lov- 
ingly shaping  his  growth.  The  man  who  could  bear 
himself  thus  was  a  good  man.  He  was  even  a  great 
man.  There  is  room  in  every  age  for  missionaries 
of  this  spirit,  who  see  ability  in  others,  and  who  lay 
themselves  out  to  develop  it,  and  who  then  can  rejoice 
in  it  without  jealousy. 

9.  It  is  rather  consoling  to  have  evidence  enough 
that  missionary  work  in  the  first  days  was  not  free 
from  the  same  problems  which  vex  us.  Young  men 
then  turned  back  from  the  work  as  they  do  now.  The 
defection  of  John  Mark  is  an  interesting  subject  for 
study  and  speculation  (Acts  xii.  12,  15;  xiii.  5,  13; 
^v.  37,  38).  It  is  easy  to  imagine  reasons  for  his 
course.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to  suggest  that  he  was 
with  Barnabas  and  Paul  merely  as  an  attendant.  He 
was  not  included  in  the  specification  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  in  Acts  xiii.  2.     You  cannot  expect  from  men 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  First  Itineration    26^ 

more  than  you  lay  on  men.  The  best  way  to  get 
spiritual  service  is  to  charge  with  spiritual  responsi- 
bility. Many  enterprises  have  lost  good  men  through 
not  having  given  them  duty  and  recognition  enough. 
Some  have  surmised  that  John  Mark  left  out  of  dis- 
gust at  Paul's  supersession  of  his  kinsman,  Barnabas. 
Whatever  the  reason,  there  was  friction,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  Paul's  second  itineration  it  involved  him 
and  Barnabas,  and  led  to  a  rupture.  The  difference 
of  opinion  between  them  was  sharp  and  decisive.  Paul 
thought  Mark  was  not  plucky  enough  for  missionary 
work,  and  Barnabas  wanted  to  try  him  again.  He 
saw  good  in  him,  as  he  had  seen  in  Paul ;  and  when 
others  distrusted  him,  as  they  had  Paul,  Barnabas 
thought  there  was  hope.  Possibly  Gal.  ii.  13,  which 
records  a  time  of  wavering  on  the  part  of  Barnabas 
with  reference  to  principles  which  Paul  regarded  as 
vital,  may  help  to  explain  this  breach.  At  any  rate 
they  parted,  and  there  is  no  record  of  their  meeting 
again.  But  Paul  always  remembered  Barnabas  kindly, 
and  by  and  by  he  came  around  to  Barnabas's  view 
of  Mark.  In  Col.  iv.  10,  he  commends  him  as  a 
relative  of  Barnabas,  and  he  finds  at  last  the  good  in 
him  which  the  tolerant  generosity  of  the  "  Son  of 
Consolation "  had  seen  in  him  from  the  beginning 
(Philemon  24;  II  Tim.  iv.  ii).  In  I.  Cor.  ix  6, 
Paul  mentions  Barnabas  honourably,  implying  that  he 
was  still  at  work,  unmarried,  and  toiling  with  his 
own  hands.  Perhaps  the  rupture  was  for  the  best. 
Perhaps  it  helped  John  Mark  to  see  his  failings.  Per- 
haps the  gospel  was  more  widely  preached  because 
of  it,  and  love  survived  it,  as  it  always  does  with 
true  men.  We  must  believe,  therefore,  that  it  was  not 
a  rupture  of  the  friendship ;  that  like  every  true  friend- 
ship, this  one  outlived  a  difference  of  opinion,  and 


266       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sweetened  the  lives  of  the  friends  to  the  end,  and  after 
the  end.  There  is  this  pleasant  feature  about  the 
separation  also.  It  resulted  in  two  itinerations  rather 
than  in  one.  When  missionary  controversies  result 
in  resignations  and  withdrawals  from  the  work  there 
is  reason  for  suspicion ;  but  we  can  endure  them  when, 
as  in  these  early  days,  they  doubled  the  volume  of  the 
work,  and  after  all,  left  no  permanent  ill-feeling  be- 
hind. 

10.  The  great  problem  which  shook  the  Early 
Church  became  more  clearly  defined  on  this  tour. 
That  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  Gentile  converts 
to  the  Jewish  law,  and  in  consequence,  the  relation 
of  the  Jewish  Christians  themselves  to  their  institu- 
tions, had  to  be  settled.  These  first  missionaries  did 
well  to  perceive  this.  There  is  nothing  gained  and 
much  lost  by  slurring  over  in  mission  work  the  in- 
evitable issues  and  collisions  which  must  arise.  These 
must  be  dealt  with  in  the  spirit  of  love,  but  also  in 
the  spirit  of  firmness  and  of  a  sound  mind.  Missions 
do  not  rest  upon  a  maudlin  erasure  of  all  lines  of 
distinct  opinion  of  truth,  and  the  purchase  of  good 
feeling  by  the  surrender  of  principle  to  sentimental 
slovenliness.  They  involve  the  fierce  clash  of  truth 
and  error.  These  early  missionary  days  show  how 
much  better  it  is  to  have  the  issue  clear  and  naked, 
and  to  settle  it  with  sharp  and  positive  finality  if  it 
be  possible. 


XXII 

SOME  MISSIONARY  ASPECTS  OF  PAUL'S  SECOND 
ITINERATION 

IN  all  effective  mission  work  supervision  is  as  essen- 
tial as  inauguration.  It  is  necessary  to  sow  the  seed, 
but  only  an  indolent  and  shiftless  husbandman  will 
take  no  heed  of  its  growth.  Paul  was  aware 
of  this.  His  purpose  in  his  second  mission  tour  was 
to  visit  the  stations  he  had  established,  to  see  how 
the  converts  were  getting  along,  to  examine  their 
organization,  and  to  confirm  the  groups  of  believers 
in  their  new  faith  (Acts  xv.  36,  41 ;  xvi.  5).  He  had 
a  similar  purpose  in  beginning  his  third  itineration 
(Acts  xviii.  23).  Three  of  the  many  characteristics 
of  Paul's  work  of  missionary  supervision  and  itinera- 
tion may  be  indicated,  (i)  It  was  very  fraternal 
in  spirit.  It  was  the  "  brethren "  who  were  to  be 
visited,  rather  than  the  "  native  converts."  To  be  sure 
the  latter  term  had  no  existence.  There  was  no  such 
racial  chasm  between  Paul  and  his  converts  as  exists 
to-day  between  the  missionary  and  his ;  but  even  if 
here  to-day,  Paul,  like  all  good  modern  missionaries, 
would  look  upon  the  fruits  of  his  work  as  "  brethren," 
and  visit  them  in  this  spirit.  (2)  The  note  of  au- 
thority, of  domination  is  not  present  in  Luke's  state- 
ment of  Paul's  suggestion  to  Barnabas.  He  proposed 
not  that  they  should  go  out  to  correct  and  rebuke. 
There  was  place  for  this  as  Paul  abundantly  recog- 
nized. But  his  idea  of  the  journey  was  to  confer,  to 
see  how  the  believers  fared,  and  to  confirm.  (3) 
There  was  no  needless  haste.  When  the  tour  de-- 
veloped  beyond  its  original  purpose,  and  became  not 

267 


268       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

a  revisitation  but  an  opening  up  of  new  fields,  Paul 
did  not  hurry.  He  tarried  eighteen  months  at  Corinth. 
He  had  no  station  or  home  responsibilities  which 
hampered  him.  He  was  free  to  follow  his  opportun- 
ities, and  was  not  tied  down  by  local  or  institutional 
responsibilities.  There  is  no  greater  need  on  the  mis- 
sion field  to-day  than  for  just  the  kind  of  work  Paul 
did  on  this  great  itineration,  whereon  the  results  so 
amply  justified  the  method.  Paul's  first  letters 
written  on  this  tour,  grew  out  of  the  same  general 
plan.  He  wrote  to  the  Thessalonian  Christians  to  say 
what  he  would  have  said  personally  could  he  have 
visited  them  then.  Supervision  by  correspondence  is 
as  common  and  necessary  to-day,  and  Paul's  models 
are  still  unsurpassed  for  missionary  tact  and  compre- 
hensiveness. 

2.  On  the  tour  and  in  its  greatest  crisis  we  see  the 
hard  sound  sense  of  the  Apostle.  He  was  working 
through  what  we  now  call  Asia  Minor,  and  his  path 
was  determined  by  indications  of  the  Spirit,  not  as  to 
w^hat  he  should  do,  but  as  to  what  he  should  not  do. 
The  Spirit  forbade  work  in  Asia.  He  tried  Bithynia, 
and  was  again  blocked.  So  he  came  down  to  Troas 
through  walls  of  negative  guidance  (Acts  xvi :  6-8). 
Paul  did  not  say :  "  I  will  wait  till  I  feel  a  call."  He 
pressed  ahead  until  he  was  obstructed.  There  is  a 
deal  too  much  lethargic  waiting  for  divine  guidance, 
when  what  God  is  wanting  is  to  see  some  sign  of  life 
and  movement  to  guide.  You  can  steer  a  moving,  but 
not  a  motionless  ship.  Doubtless  a  man  may  bustle 
about  so  in  his  own  fussy  plans  as  to  be  in  no  fit  con- 
dition to  hear  divine  counsel  or  to  seek  it ;  but  there 
is  no  warrant  in  Paul's  metliod  for  the  course  of  those 
who  dislike  to  move  toward  the  foreign  field  unless 
compelled  from  without. 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  Second  Itineration  269 

At  the  end  of  this  hedging  in  and  hedging  off,  Paul 
got  some  positive  leading;  but  even  then  his  conclusion 
of  duty  was  an  inference.  He  interpreted  his  dream 
in  the  spirit  of  his  hfe.  He  was  a  going  man  and  he 
was  looking  for  beckonings.  Some  modern  evader 
would  have  called  it  a  dream,  and  pronounced  it 
utterly  insufficient  reason  for  any  serious  forward 
step. 

Ramsay  thinks  the  Macedonian  whom  Paul  saw  was 
Luke.  How  otherwise  could  Paul  know  it  was  a  Ma- 
cedonian than  by  recognizing  a  Macedonian  acquaint- 
ance? There  was  nothing  peculiar  in  the  dress  of  the 
Macedonians,  and  Luke  was  probably  the  only  Mace- 
donian he  knew.  "  We  can  imagine,"  says  Ramsay, 
"  how  Paul  came  to  Troas,  in  doubt  as  to  what  should 
be  done.  As  a  harbour  it  formed  the  link  between  Asia 
and  Macedonia.  Here  he  met  the  Macedonian  Luke ; 
and  with  his  view  turned  onwards  he  slept,  and  beheld 
in  a  vision  his  Macedonian  acquaintance  beckoning 
him  onward  to  his  own  country."  * 

3.  The  fruits  of  the  missionary  journey  were  far 
greater  than  Paul  himself  could  have  foreseen  or 
dreamed.  He  could  dream  duty,  but  not  the  conse- 
quences of  doing  it.  There  were  of  course,  immediate 
results  in  the  conversion  of  souls,  and  the  organization 
of  churches.  Paul  did  not  distrust  the  results  be- 
cause they  were  immediate.  Again  and  again  hearers 
who  accepted  the  first  message  or  who  had  heard  little 
more,  were  baptized.  To  be  sure  these  people  had  in 
the  main  already  been  schooled  into  the  theistic  faith 
of  the  Plebrews.  or  had  been  brought  up  in  it ;  but  they 
could  scarcely  have  been  better  subjects  than  some 
missionary  converts  of  to-dav : — the  converts  from  the 
degraded  Christian  Churches  of  Asia  for  example. 
*  Si.  Paul  the  Traveller  and  Ro7nan  Czizzeti,  p,  203. 


l']0       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

The  only  reason  for  probation  of  professed  converts 
on  mission  fields  to-day  was  totally  absent,  namely,  the 
necessity  of  testing  motives  lest  the  desire  for  baptism 
spring  from  ulterior  purpose  or  search  for  gain.  The 
change  has  been  due  to  the  present  identification  of  the 
Christian  propaganda  with  financial  and  political 
power.  Our  propaganda  is  from  above  down.  Then 
it  was  from  below  up.  There  are  some  who  feel  that 
this  is  a  gain.  Probably  Paul  would  not  wholly  agree 
with  them.  Not  only,  further,  did  he  baptize  at  once, 
but  he  baptized  by  families,  apparently  accepting  the 
faith  of  the  head  of  the  family  as  extending  its  efficacy 
over  all.  Doubtless  the  family  shared,  but  the  story 
of  Philippi  evidently  intends  to  set  forth  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  family  baptism.  The  social  organization 
in  many  Asiatic  lands  makes  this  principle  a  very  real 
principle  now.  Thus  a  missionary  writes  from  India : 
"  During  the  past  year  I  have  baptized  but  few  peo- 
ple, in  all  only  four  families,  out  of  regard  to  the 
Synod's  instructions.  Those  instructions  were  that  as 
a  rule  only  those  adults  should  be  baptized  who  are 
deemed  fit  to  be  admitted  to  the  Lord's  Supper.  There 
is  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  anyone  in  our  two  Missions 
who  is  engaged  in  this  work  where  family  movements 
are  taking  place,  that  to  strictly  observe  these  direc- 
tions would  be  to  incalculably  injure  the  work.  It  is 
usually  impossible  to  instruct  the  women  of  a  family 
sufficiently  to  admit  of  their  being  rightly  admitted  to 
the  Lord's  Supper  by  the  time  the  head  of  the  house 
is  ready.  Moreover,  it  is  usually  the  case  that  some 
members  of  the  family  will  probabl}-  never  come  to  the 
Lord's  Table,  as  in  the  case  with  most  families  in  our 
Church  in  America.  We  must  then  choose  between 
baptizing  families  on  the  faith  of  the  head  of  the 
family,  which  is,  I  believe,  as  Scriptural  as  it  seems 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  Second  Itineration  271 

to  me  wise,  or  having  no  Christian  community,  but 
only  scattered  individuals.  We  cannot  follow  implic- 
itly the  Synod's  directions,  unless  we  abdicate  our 
own  convictions  to  an  extent  we  unanimously  adjudge 
most  evil  when  required  by  Papacy,  and  we  will  not 
do  it  when  it  means  killing  or  at  best  seriously  crip- 
pling the  work  that  is  opening  before  us.  Yet  the  cau- 
tion, conveyed  too  forcibly  in  the  Synod's  action,  was 
needed  and  opportune,  and  I  believe  the  following  the 
spirit  of  that  action  during  the  past  year  has  been  of 
great  benefit  to  our  work.  With  the  exception  of  the 
few  already  noted,  I  am  still  postponing  the  baptism 
of  all  applicants  until  the  heads  of  families  at  least  are 
fairly  instructed,  and  give  proof  of  both  a  sincere  and 
intelligent  receiving  of  Christ  and  the  gospel — though 
the  '  intelligent '  reception  can  only  be  very  elemen- 
tary." 

Women  are  conspicuous  among  the  results  of  Paul's 
work  (Acts  xvi :  13-16;  xvii :  4,  12,  34).  Their  special 
sympathy  with  the  gospel  message  is  not  new  in  our 
day. 

4.  The  great  results  of  this  tour,  however,  were  the 
wider  opening  of  the  door  of  faith  to  the  Gentiles,  and 
the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  Europe.  Paul's 
realization  of  the  width  of  the  gospel's  mission  grew 
clear  and  strong,  and  with  this,  his  mighty  purpose  to 
spread  it  over  the  whole  Roman  Empire.  Before  he 
had  finished  this  tour  he  had  declared  to  the  Jews,  "  as 
he  shook  out  his  raiment,"  ''  Your  blood  be  upon  your 
own  heads ;  I  am  clean ;  from  henceforth  I  will  go 
unto  the  Gentiles"  (Acts  xviii :  5). 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there  was  in  Paul's  mind 
no  such  idea  of  crisis,  or  of  pregnant  significance  as 
we  now  see  in  his  crossing  the  Hellespont  and  plant- 
ing the  gospel  on  the  soil  of  Europe.     "  A  broad  dis- 


272       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

tinction  between  the  two  opposite  sides  of  the  Helles- 
pont as  belonging  to  two  different  continents  had  no 
existence  in  the  thought  of  those  who  lived  in  the 
^gean  lands,  and  regarded  the  sea  as  the  path  con- 
necting the  ^gean  countries  with  each  other ;  and  the 
distinction  had  no  more  existence  in  a  political  point  of 
view,  for  Macedonia  and  Asia  were  merely  two  prov- 
inces of  the  Roman  Empire,  closely  united  by  common 
language  and  character,  and  divided  from  the  Latin- 
speaking  provinces  further  west."  *  It  was  God,  not 
Paul,  who  planned  the  westward  movement  of  Chris- 
tianity, with  a  view  to  the  far  forward  countries. 

But  Paul  was  already  thinking  of  the  Empire  and 
this  tour  developed  that  thought  into  a  masterful  plan 
and  ambition.  He  "  mentions  in  writing  to  the 
Romans,  xv :  24,  that  he  intended  to  go  on  from  Rome 
to  Spain.  Such  an  intention  implies  in  the  plainest 
way  an  idea  already  existent  in  Paul's  mind  of  Chris- 
tianity as  the  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Spain 
was  by  far  the  most  thoroughly  Romanized  district  of 
the  Empire,  as  was  marked  soon  after  by  the  act  of 
Vespasian  in  75,  when  he  made  the  Latin  status  uni- 
versal in  Spain.  From  the  centre  of  the  Roman  world 
Paul  would  go  on  to  the  chief  seat  of  Roman  civiliza- 
tion in  the  West,  and  would  thus  complete  a  first  sur- 
vey, the  intervals  of  which  should  be  filled  up  by  assist- 
ants, such  as  Timothy,  Titus,  etc."  f 

5.  A  part  of  Paul's  missionary  method  illustrated 
and  confirmed  by  this  itineration,  was  to  go  directly 
to  the  main  cities.  The  cities  were  the  centres  of  in- 
fluence.   The  people  were  in  them,  and  doubtless  then 

*  Ramsay,  S/.  Paul  the  Traveller  and  Roman  Citzen,  p. 
109. 

f  Ramsay,  St.  Paul  the  Traveller  atid  Roman  Citizen,  p. 
255- 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  Second  Itineration  273 

as  in  some  lands  now,  there  was  less  espionage,  less 
subjection  to  priest  and  tradition,  more  freedom  of 
movement  and  opinion  in  the  cities  than  in  country 
villages.  At  any  rate,  Paul  was  but  one,  and  his  reli- 
able associates  were  few  now,  and  not  numerous  even 
later  (Col,  iv :  11 ;  Phil,  ii :  21),  and  he  could  not  afford 
to  waste  time  on  good  work  when  better  could  be 
done,  or  on  a  few  when  he  could  reach  the  world. 
Doubtless  the  spirit  of  fearless  warfare  which  always 
inspired  Paul  was  with  him  in  this;  and  feeling  that 
Christianity  held  the  sole  and  indispensable  secret  of 
life,  he  longed  to  match  it  against  the  strongest  forces 
in  the  world.  Have  we  the  same  faith  ?  He  faced  the 
whole  world  with  nothing  but  the  gospel,  and  feared 
nothing.  We  face  half  the  world  with  the  gospel  and 
the  other  half  of  the  world,  and  are  afraid. 

6.  Nor  did  persecutions  destroy  his  confidence  or 
shake  his  purpose.  He  anticipated  these.  He  met 
Jewish  opposition  which  took  matters  into  its  own 
hands  (Acts  xvii :  5),  and  other  Jewish  opposition 
which  tried  to  induce  Roman  authority  to  curb  him 
(Acts  xviii :  12),  and  he  encountered  also  direct 
Roman  opposition  (Acts  xvi :  20,  21).  Two  points 
may  be  suggested,  (i)  Paul  appealed  in  Philippi  to 
his  rights  of  Roman  citizenship  (Acts  xvi:  37-39). 
He  had  been  wronged  and  he  refused  to  ignore  it.  He 
insisted  that  the  praetors  should  themselves  come  to 
the  prison  and  make  amends.  It  is  hair-splitting  to 
attempt  to  exclude  from  Paul's  behaviour  at  this  time 
a  recognition  of  principles  which  amply  justify,  by 
Pauline  precedent,  the  use  by  missionaries  to-day  of 
their  political  rights  for  their  defence,  when  such  de- 
fence is  advantageous  to  the  cause  for  which  they  are 
bound  to  live  or  die  as  it  requires.  (2)  The  decision 
of  Gallic  in  the  persecution  case  in  Corinth,  went  far 


274       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  settle  Paul  in  his  conviction  that  the  cvanf^elization 
of  the  Empire  was  possible.  That  judgment,  as  Ram- 
say says,  "  seems  to  have  been  the  crowning  fact  in 
determining  Paul's  line  of  conduct."  And  he  adds : 
"  According  to  our  view,  the  residence  at  Corinth  was 
an  epoch  in  Paul's  life.  As  regards  his  doctrine  he 
became  more  clearly  conscious  of  its  character,  as  well 
as  more  precise  and  definite  in  his  presentation  of  it ; 
and  as  regards  practical  work  he  became  more  clear 
as  to  his  aim  and  the  means  of  attaining  the  aim, 
namely,  that  Christianity  should  be  spread  through  the 
civilized,  i.  e.,  the  Roman,  world  (not  as  excluding, 
but  as  preparatory  to,  the  entire  world.  Col.  iii :  11), 
using  the  freedom  of  speech  which  the  Imperial  policy 
as  declared  by  Gallio,  seemed  inclined  to  permit." 

8.  Paul  learned  a  great  lesson  on  this  trip  as  to  the 
nature  and  limits  of  conciliation  in  presenting  the  gos- 
pel. The  tour  began  with  the  conciliatory  circum- 
cision of  Timothy,  whose  father  was  a  Greek,  and 
who,  according  to  Paul's  doctrine  as  presented  in  the 
Galatian  Epistle,  and  indeed,  according  to  the  decree 
of  the  Jerusalem  Council  need  not  have  been  circum- 
cised at  all.  And  at  first  Paul  took  pains  everywhere 
in  loyalty  to  the  Council  to  deliver  and  emphasize  the 
decrees  from  Jerusalem.  As  he  began  to  see,  how- 
ever, the  ministry  of  larger  freedom  and  as  the  his- 
tory of  the  Galatian  Christians,  and  his  own  experience 
showed  him  the  awful  peril  and  burden  of  the  Jewish 
law,  he  moved  away  from  circumcision  and  the  de- 
crees, and  preached  a  gospel  of  liberty.  And  later  on 
this  tour,  he  was  less  zealous  to  deal  softly  with  the 
prejudices  of  the  Jews  than  he  had  been  at  the  be- 
ginning. At  Corinth  he  flouted  his  skirts  in  the  face 
of  his  opposers,  and,  cast  out  of  the  synagogue,  he 
established  his  headquarters  next  door,  with  the  former 


Some  Aspects  of  Paul's  Second  Itineration  275 

ruler  of  the  synagogue  who  had  joined  him,  as  one 
of  his  chief  assistants.  But  he  still  strove  in  every 
honest  way  to  reach  Jews  (Acts  xviiiiiQ),  and  in- 
deed, his  arrest  in  Jerusalem  which  led  to  his  appeal 
to  Rome  was  due  to  his  further  attempt  to  pursue  a 
course  of  conciliation  coming  close  to  a  surrender  of 
his  principles  (Acts  xxi :  17-30). 

And  Paul  got  experience  on  the  subject  of  adapta- 
tion and  conciliation  in  his  relations  to  Gentiles  also. 
His  first  notable  contact  as  a  missionary  with  the  Gen- 
tile world  was  at  Athens.  Here  in  a  remarkable  ad- 
dress he  preached  theism  to  the  Athenians,  quoting 
their  poets,  presenting  a  broad  doctrine  of  providence, 
and  a  kindly  view  of  human  nature,  with  no  direct 
mention  of  sin  or  of  the  real  agony  of  the  problem  of 
life,  and  with  the  most  guarded  reference  to  Jesus. 
The  implications  of  the  address  are  barely  concordant 
with  the  views  he  later  expressed  in  the  first  chap- 
ters of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  "  We  must  not, 
of  course,  demand  that  the  entire  theology  of  Paul 
should  be  compressed  into  this  single  address,  but 
yet  there  is  a  notable  omission  of  an  element  that  was 
unfamiliar  and  probably  repugnant  to  his  audience, 
and  an  equally  notable  insistence  on  an  element  that 
was  familiar  to  them."  *  This  speech  of  Paul's  is  con-  ] 
stantly  cited  as  an  illustration  of  what  missionary 
preaching  to  the  heathen  should  be.  But  it  may  be 
noted  (i)  that  the  results  were  utterly  unsatisfactory. 
So  long  as  he  got  nowhere  near  the  gospel,  the  Athe- 
nians listened  to  him.  When  he  touched  it,  the  dis-  ^ 
course  was  stopped.  Some  clave  to  Paul,  but  we 
hear  of  no  church  at  Athens.  (2)  Paul  never  tried 
this  style  of  preaching  again.     As  Ramsay  says :  "  It 

*  Ramsay,  5/,  Paul  the  Traveller  and  Roman  Citizen,  p. 
251  f. 


276        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

would  appear  that  Paul  was  disappointed  and  per- 
haps disillusioned  by  his  experience  in  Athens.  He 
felt  that  he  had  gone  at  least  as  far  as  was  right  in 
the  way  of  presenting  his  doctrine  in  a  form  suited  to 
the  current  philosophy;  and  the  result  had  been  little 
more  than  naught.  When  he  went  on  from  Athens  to 
Corinth,  he  no  longer  spoke  in  the  philosophic  style. 
In  replying  afterwards  to  the  unfavourable  compari- 
son between  his  preaching  and  the  more  philosophic 
style  of  Apollos,  he  told  the  Corinthians  that,  when 
he  came  among  them,  he  '  determined  not  to  know 
anything  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  Him  crucified '  ( i 
Cor.  ii :  2)  ;  and  nowhere  throughout  his  writings  is 
he  so  hard  on  the  wise,  the  philosophers,  and  the 
dialecticians,  as  when  he  defends  the  way  in  which  he 
had  presented  Christianity  at  Corinth.  Apparently 
the  greater  concentration  of  purpose  and  simplicity 
of  method  in  his  preaching  at  Corinth  is  referred  to 
by  Luke,  when  he  says  that  when  Silas  and  Timothy 
rejoined  him  there,  they  found  him  wholly  possessed 
by  and  engrossed  in  the  Word." 

This  journey  reveals  to  us  the  missionary  methods 
of  Paul  in  process  of  fuller  development.  It  lets  us 
into  the  beginnings  of  his  lofty  ambition  to  evangelize 
the  Roman  Empire,  through  which,  he  later  wrote  to 
the  Romans,  he  had  fully  preached  the  gospel  from 
Jerusalem  round  about  to  Illyricum.  And  it  shows 
us  the  mind  of  the  Apostle  laying  firmer  hold  upon 
those  great  central  and  vital  truths  of  Christianity, 
the  concealment  or  abatement  of  which  is  rather 
treason  than  conciliation,  and  treason  of  the  most  ter- 
rible sort,  because  it  betrays  both  the  world  in  its 
death  of  sin  and  the  Saviour  on  His  Cross  of  Life. 
The  gospel  must  be  preached  in  love.  But  the  gospel 
must  be  preached. 


XXIII 

IMPRESSIONS   OF   CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS  IN  ASIA 

IT  was  my  profitable  privilege  a  few  years  ago  to 
make  an  extended  tour  among  the  Christian  mis- 
sions at  work  in  Asia,  and  I  would  suggest  some 
of  the  dominant  impressions  made  upon  my  mind 
by  this  tour.  It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  con- 
dense one's  impressions  of  a  continent.  Eight  hun- 
dred millions  of  people  live  in  Asia.  The  greatest 
part  of  human  history  is  connected  with  Asia.  Back 
to  Asia  all  our  past  roots  run.  On  to  Asia  all  our 
future  history  will  tend.  Eight  hundred  millions  of 
people  have  enormous  interests.  Those  interests  can- 
not be  spoken  of  lightly  or  briefly,  but  I  shall  try  to 
touch  upon  a  few  of  the  strongest  impressions  made 
upon  the  mind  of  a  Christian  traveller  among  the 
peoples  and  missions  of  the  East. 

The  first  of  these  impressions  is  that  of  the  unity  of 
the  human  race.  That  is  not  chronologically  the  first 
impression  made  upon  one's  mind ;  precisely  the  op- 
posite is  true.  Confused  by  the  Babel  of  their  speech, 
the  kaleidoscopic  colour  of  their  dress,  the  diversity 
of  their  ways  and  points  of  view  and  customs,  the 
first  impression  made  upon  the  traveller's  mind  is 
precisely  the  opposite  of  harmony  and  unity.  He  sees 
a  great  tangling,  jarring  mass  of  peoples;  he  hears 
the  discordant  notes  of  their  languages,  and  he  can- 
not perceive  any  unity.  He  feels  instinctively  the  dif- 
ference between  him  and  them,  between  his  point  of 
view  and  theirs ;  and  he  is  given  at  once  to  under- 
stand that  they  feel  the  difference  between  them  and 
him,  and  between  their  point  of  view  and  his.     He 

277 


278       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

looks  upon  them  as  no  more  barbarian  than  they  look 
upon  him.  The  first  impression  that  comes  to  him 
is  that  there  is  a  chasm  fixed  between  him  and 
these  Eastern  peoples.  I  observe  that  Principal  Fair- 
bairn  seems  to  have  been  most  impressed  with  this, 
and  in  the  first  address  he  delivered  to  the  people  of 
India,  he  quoted  from  Kipling's  ballad: 

"  Oh,  East  is  East,  and  West  is  West, 
And  never  the  twain  shall  meet. 
Till  earth  and  sky  stand  presently, 
At  God's  great  judgment  seat." 

I  do  not  wonder  that  that  was  the  impression  made 
upon  his  mind.  I  only  wonder  that  Dr.  Fairbaim  did 
not  go  on  immediately  to  quote  the  next  lines  from  Mr. 
Kipling : 

"  But  there  is  neither  East  nor  West, 
Border,  nor  breed,  nor  birth. 
When  two  strong  men  stand  face  to  face. 

Though  they  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth." 

For  true  and  vivid  as  the  first  impression  that  they 
and  we  are  different  from  one  another,  the  longer 
one  mingles  with  these  Eastern  peoples,  the  more  one 
comes  to  feel  our  essential  unity  with  them,  and  to  be 
conscious  of  his  being  but  a  member  of  a  great  com- 
mon humanity,  bound  together  by  ties  more  real  than 
any  of  those  distinct  and  differentiating  things  that 
appear  to  separate  us  section  from  section;  and  the 
longer  one  travels  among  the  peoples  of  the  East,  the 
stronger  does  the  conviction  grow  in  his  mind  that 
the  Apostle  was  summing  up  one  of  the  greatest  truths 
when  he  declared  that  "  God  has  made  of  one  blood 
all  nations   of  men   to   dwell   upon   the   face   of   the 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  279 

earth."  However  different  the  colours  of  our  skins, 
the  fashions  of  our  dress,  our  customs,  points  of  view, 
judgments,  and  speech  may  be  one  from  the  other, 
underneath  all  these  distinguishing  features  v^e  and 
the  people  of  the  East  are  one.  And  never  in  all  the 
meetings  that  we  held  with  Christians  and  non-Chris- 
tians throughout  the  East  did  words  pointing  to 
our  unity,  the  features  of  life  that  we  share,  fail  to 
call  forth,  even  from  the  stupidest  people,  immediate 
and  hearty  response.  This  world  is  one  world.  How- 
ever rich  in  our  privileges  we  may  be,  however  we 
may  regard  ourselves  as  superior  to  the  alien  nations, 
we  and  they  are  alike  the  children  of  one  Father; 
and  out  of  the  deepened  impression  of  our  unity  grow 
all  kinds  of  generous  assurances  and  expectations. 

Having  seen  the  people  of  the  East,  and  having  felt 
the  common  ties  that  bind  them  to  us,  one  is  more 
conscious  than  ever  of  the  truth  of  the  common  father- 
hood of  our  Father  in  heaven,  and  of  the  real  and 
vital  ties  that  bind  all  His  children  together  in  one 
great  brotherhood;  and  one  finds  in  this  an  impres- 
sion of  the  dawn,  the  promise  and  the  pledge  of  the 
coming  of  that  day  when  over  all  this  world  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Father  shall  be  gathered  in  one  common 
Church.  Whether  or  not  there  ever  will  come  a  time 
when  men  shall  gather  themselves  in  one  great  Chris- 
tian federation,  one  great  "  parliament  of  man,"  no 
one  knows;  but  whoever  has  travelled  among  the 
peoples  of  Asia  cannot  fail  to  come  back  with  the  con- 
viction that  the  time  is  drawing  nearer  and  nearer 
when  the  peoples  of  the  world  shall  be  joined  together 
by  the  ties  of  a  common  Christian  Church,  wherein 
the  war  drums  will  cease  to  throb,  and  the  battle  flags 
be  forever  furled  and  laid  aside. 

The  second  impression  made  upon  the  mind  of  any 


28o       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

thoughtful  traveller  among  the  peoples  and  the  mis- 
sions of  Asia  is  directly  connected  with  this  first  one. 
As  the  impression  grows  that  we  are  all  one,  the 
traveller  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  people 
among  whom  he  is  moving  deny  such  unity,  and 
arc  hving  under  religions  whose  first  principles 
deny  that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  the  unity  of 
mankind.  One  comes  to  see  instantly,  and  this  is  the 
second  conviction  that  one  would  form,  the  insufficiency 
of  the  non-Christian  religions.  They  are  insufficient, 
if  for  no  other  reason,  because  they  have  never  ap- 
prehended the  idea  of  a  common  humanity,  of  the 
solidarity  of  mankind.  What  one  of  them  is  there 
which  has  not  denied  it?  Mohammedanism  puts  out- 
side the  pale  all  who  do  not  acknowledge  the  Prophet. 
Hinduism  looks  down  upon  all  the  unprivileged  peo- 
ple shut  out  of  its  prerogatives.  The  Chinese,  how- 
ever much  they  may  be  touched  by  a  modified  form 
of  the  Buddhist  faith,  yet  have  erected  barriers  of  ex- 
clusion that  have  made  them  the  most  secluded  peo- 
ple on  this  earth.  Every  religion  excepting  Christ's 
religion  has  denied  that  there  is  a  common  humanity; 
has  denied  that  there  is  a  common  Father  of  us  all ; 
lacks  among  its  aspirations  and  expectations  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  of  a  common  human  family,  living  under 
a  common  Heavenly  Father's  love. 

Now,  it  is  not  pleasing  to  a  Christian  man  to  make 
this  discovery.  I  do  not  see  how  any  Christian  man 
can  go  out  among  the  nations  and  peoples  without 
desiring  to  find  good  in  their  faiths,  and  without  feel- 
ing pained  at  each  discovery  of  their  insufficiency. 
It  is  not  gratifying  to  us  to  know  that  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions  do  not  meet  the  wants  of  the  hearts  of 
men.  The  Christian  man  generously  looks  for  all  the 
good  he  can  discover  in  them,   and  much  good  he 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  281 

finds  there.  I  wonder  that  we  make  so  little  use  of 
the  Koran.  In  spite  of  all  that  Thomas  Carlyle  said 
about  it,  it  is  a  great  book,  almost  worthy  to  be  laid 
beside  Thomas  a  Kempis's  Imitation  of  Christ.  We 
lose  much  because  we  do  not  know  the  Koran.  Where 
can  you  find  outside  the  Bible  a  nobler  statement  of 
the  real  and  vital  sovereignty  of  God?  Where 
can  you  find  in  all  literature  a  nobler  appeal  for  God's 
supreme  rulership  in  human  history?  And  he 
surely  is  blind  who  cannot  find  great  good  in  the 
system  of  thought  that  Confucius  codified.  We  stand 
in  China  before  a  nation  with  which  no  other  nation 
is  comparable  for  frugality,  for  patience,  for  sim- 
plicity of  life,  for  sense  of  responsibility,  for  filial 
regard ;  and  for  all  these  things  a  man  is  ungenerous 
who  is  not  willing  to  give  Confucius  all  the  credit 
which  is  his  due. 

In  all  the  non-Christian  religions  there  is  good. 
Christianity  gains  nothing  by  denying  what  good 
there  is.  It  is  only  enough  for  Christianity  to  point 
out  that  there  is  nothing  good  in  any  of  them  which 
is  not  in  it.  And  in  it  there  are  all  those  compen- 
sating and  balancing  goods  without  which  the  goods  of 
the  non-Christian  faiths  have  all  of  them  been  carried 
to  falseness  and  disruption.  Mohammed  taught  men 
that  there  was  a  God,  separate  and  solitary,  sitting 
apart  cold  and  inscrutable,  watching  the  great  ma- 
chine of  life  which  He  had  made  grind  out  its  irresis- 
tible, unchangeable  decrees.  But  Mohammed's  God 
was  a  dead  god,  dead  to  our  world  and  its  life.  Poor 
Omar  Khayyam  represents  with  sad  fittingness  the 
dreary  Mohammedan  creed: 

**  One  moment  in  annihilation's  waste, 
One  moment  of  the  well  of  life  to  taste. 


282       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

The  stars  are  setting,  and  the  caravan 

Starts  for  the  dawn  of  nothing — O,  make  haste! 

"  And  that  inverted  howl  we  call  the  sky, 

Whereunder  crawling,  coop'd,  we  live  and  die, 

Lift  not  thy  hands  to  it  for  help. 

For  it  rolls  impotently  on,  as  thou  or  I." 

When  Mohammed  wrote  the  Koran  and  shut  God 
out  of  the  world,  and  killed  the  spirit  of  life  and  prog- 
ress in  men,  he  guaranteed  that  this  should  happen; 
that,  as  Lord  Houghton  said, 

"  While  the  world  rolls  on  from  change  to  change, 
And  realms  of  thought  expand, 
The  letter  stands  without  expanse  or  range. 
Stiff  as  a  dead  man's  hand." 

Now,  it  must  be  confessed  that  Hinduism  escaped 
the  great  error  of  Mohammedanism.  Instead  of 
shutting  God  out  of  His  world,  it  brought  Him  very 
near,  and  identified  Him  with  the  life  of  man.  As  we 
came  down  from  a  temple  at  Benares,  a  Hindu  priest 
stood  by  the  bank  of  the  Ganges. 

"  Gentlemen,"  said  he,  "  give  to  these  cows." 

"  Why?  "  said  my  friend. 

"  For  God's  sake,"  he  replied. 

"  Why  for  God's  sake  ?  "  we  asked. 

"  Because  God  is  in  these  cows,"  said  the  priest. 

"  Is  God  everywhere  ?  "  we  asked. 

**  Certainly,"  he  said. 

"And  in  man?" 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  priest.  "  God  is  in  man  at 
all  times ;  and  in  all  his  acts,  assuredly." 

"  And  in  man  in  the  act  and  at  the  time  of  sin  ?  " 

"  Certainly;  when  I  sin,  it  is  the  God  in  me  sinning." 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  283 

Hinduism  escaped  from  the  Mohammedan  nullifica- 
tion of  God  by  identifying  God  with  human  life  and 
all  its  activities.  The  Hindu  believes  in  a  God  who, 
instead  of  setting  up  external  and  objective  standards 
of  a  pure  life,  sinks  himself  in  the  abyss  of  man's  sub- 
jective passions  and  lusts.  It  is  true  that  Hinduism 
escaped  the  error  of  Mohammedanism,  but  it  was  by 
falling  into  a  worse  error. 

As  against  this  error,  Gautama  protested  that  there 
was  a  future  life  when  men  should  receive  recompense 
for  the  deeds  done  in  this  life.  But  in  laying  his  em- 
phasis on  the  life  to  come,  Buddha  took  the  thoughts 
of  men  off  the  life  which  now  is,  and  plunged  all  the 
hundreds  of  millions  who  believe  in  him  into  a  nerve- 
less life,  a  want  of  all  power,  so  that  the  Buddhist 
nations  have  accomplished  nothing.  No  Buddhist  peo- 
ple has  ever  established  any  permanent  philanthropy, 
or  conducted  any  great  permanent  enterprise.  It  was 
a  protest  based  on  a  one-sided  view  of  truth, 
and  it  has  died  away  unworthily  into  the  lethargy 
that  marks  all  Buddhist  lands. 

That  error  regarding  the  right  attitude  toward  life 
Confucianism  escaped.  Confucius  went  precisely  to 
the  other  extreme.  "  I  do  not  know  hfe,"  he  said  in 
substance.  "  How  can  I  know  death  ?  I  do  not  un- 
derstand my  own  heart;  how  can  I  know  anything 
about  God  ? "  And  he  has  tried  to  take  the  thoughts 
of  four  hundred  millions  of  his  fellow  creatures  off 
the  unseen  world,  and  off  the  unseen  God,  and  fix  them 
upon  this  hard  and  mechanical  present,  and  he  has 
well  nigh  frozen  up  the  sympathies  and  killed  the  as- 
pirations of  one-quarter  of  the  human  race.  It  is  true 
there  is  good  in  all  the  non-Christian  religions ;  but  the 
very  truths  that  they  have  emphasized  are  devoleped 
out  of  their  just  proportion,  and  lead  men  astray. 


284       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

And  one  perceives  even  more  clearly  the  in- 
sufficiency of  the  non-Christian  religion  when  he 
stops  to  note  that  there  is  a  chasm  growing  ever 
wider,  ever  broader  between  their  ideal  and  their 
real.  Much  in  the  Vedas,  in  the  Chinese  classics,  in 
the  early  Buddhist  books,  in  the  Koran,  any  Chris- 
tian can  get  good  from.  The  difficulty  is  that  be- 
tween the  non-Christian  ideal  and  the  non-Christian 
real  the  chasm  is  wide  and  ever  widening.  Men  say 
to  you  out  in  the  non-Christian  countries  that  there 
is  a  chasm  between  the  ideal  and  the  real  in  Chris- 
tianity. And  there  is.  Here  in  our  own  life,  in  these 
lands,  in  our  Christian  churches,  our  Bible  is  still  on 
a  level  above  our  life.  But  the  difference  is  this, 
that  the  chasm  between  the  ideal  and  the  real  in 
heathenism  is  ever  broadening,  and  the  chasm  between 
the  ideal  and  the  real  in  Christian  lands  is  narrow- 
ing. I  believe  Christianity  is  purer  to-day  than  ever 
before,  that  it  is  producing  nobler  characters,  that 
we  are  growing  closer  to,  and  not  drifting  further 
from,  the  mind  of  Christ ;  that  between  the  ideal  and 
the  real  in  Christian  lands  the  chasm  grows  ever  nar- 
rower and  narrower  as  the  years  pass  by,  while  in 
non-Christian  countries  the  chasm  broadens  every 
year.  A  recent  number  of  the  Hindu,  one  of  the 
leading  native  papers  published  in  India,  speaks  of 
just  this  truth,  confessing  that  the  good  old  days  are 
gone,  and  gone  forever,  and  that  every  year  shows 
the  gulf  wider  and  broader,  and  more  ghastly  be- 
tween their  actual  life  and  the  ideals  held  up  by  their 
prophets  centuries  ago. 

And  there  is  this  further  difference,  already  pointed 
out,  that  Christianity  possesses  within  itself  the  power 
of  its  own  self-purification.  While  every  other  religion 
grows  worse  and  worse,  Christianity  grows  better  and 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  285 

better.  There  is  the  spirit  of  the  Divine  Hfe  in  it,  of  a 
Godly  progress;  and,  as  the  years  roll  by,  Christ's 
Church,  side  by  side  with  growing  evil,  and  iniquity, 
and  sin,  will  grow  purer  and  better  and  holier,  while 
non-Christian  faiths  stick  fast  in  the  mire  and  draw 
ever  nearer  to  their  goal  of  death. 

The  missionary  movement  is  not  a  philanthropic 
movement,  it  is  not  a  charitable  movement,  it  is  not  a 
political  movement.  It  is  an  evangelistic,  religious 
movement.  Its  object  is  to  supplant  falsehood  or 
partial  truth  which  too  often  serves  falsehood,  with  the 
full  truth  of  Christianity.  If  we  believe  that  the  non- 
Christian  religions  are  suffiicent,  we  cannot  keep  up  the 
missionary  movement.  Young  men  will  not  give  their 
lives  to  it.  Young  women  will  not  sacrifice  their 
homes  for  it.  The  Church  will  not  curtail  her  self-in- 
dulgence for  it.  It  is  only  as  we  perceive  that  the 
missionary  movement  is  a  distinctly  religious  move- 
ment, the  message  of  God  to  His  dying  children,  to 
His  misguided  children,  that  we  shall  plant  the  mission- 
ary movement  on  those  foundations  from  which  it  can 
never  be  removed.  One  cannot  travel  through  the 
non-Christian  lands  without  having  this  conviction 
of  the  moral  error  of  heathenism  deepened  until  it 
cuts  his  heart  with  pain. 

The  third  impression  is  that  of  the  solidity  and  the 
success  of  the  missionary  movement.  It  would  be  a 
dreary,  dreary  prospect  if  we  stood  face  to  face  with 
the  world  of  need  only.  We  stand  face  to  face  with 
the  world  of  need  in  which  the  gospel  is  demonstra- 
ting itself  to  be  the  adequate  response  and  the  ade- 
quate supply.  The  world  does  not  appreciate  the  mis- 
sionaries at  their  full  value.  I  came  home  with  a  very 
much  higher  opinion  as  to  missionary  character.  I 
heard  Dr.  James  Stalker  say  once,  ten  or  twelve  years 


286       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

agfo,  that  he  had  often  been  asked  what  his  jud^^ent 
of  missionaries  was ;  were  they  after  all  an  inferior  lot, 
or  about  the  average?  Or  were  they,  as  many  hero- 
worshippers  supposed,  far  above  the  average?  He 
said  he  was  accustomed  to  reply  that  he  had  known  a 
great  many  missionaries,  among  them  David  Living- 
stone, and  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  aver- 
age missionary  was  a  little  better  man  spiritually  and 
intellectually  than  the  average  minister  at  home.  And 
if  I  were  to  modify  Dr.  Stalker's  judgment  at  all, 
after  meeting  with  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  mission- 
aries, I  should  simply  omit  the  word  "  little."  One 
could  quote  scores  of  testimonies  regarding  mis- 
sionary character  and  achievement.  We  do  not  be- 
gin to  understand  here  in  these  Christian  lands  what 
the  missionaries  have  done  and  are  doing.  Little 
handfuls  of  men  in  many  lands — little  handfuls  of 
men  buried  in  the  darkness  of  heathenism  round  about, 
buried  out  of  sight  among  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
strange  people — are  still  doing,  down  at  the  roots  of 
human  life  and  society,  the  lasting  work  of  the  new 
creation.  At  the  close  of  a  meeting  we  were  holding 
in  Teheran,  the  British  Minister  came  up  to  say  that 
he  wanted  to  speak  just  a  word  to  be  carried  back  to 
the  American  Churches  regarding  the  American  Pres- 
byterian missionaries  of  Northern  Persia.  "  I  cannot 
over-estimate,"  he  said,  "  the  good  that  these  men 
and  women  are  doing  in  this  land  " — a  little  company, 
only  forty  or  fifty  altogether,  among  five  millions  of 
Mohammedans,  the  hardest  peojilc  in  the  world  to 
impress  in  any  way, — "  T  cannot  begin,"  he  said,  "  to 
tell  the  wide  influence  that  they  are  exerting,  the  in- 
calculable good  that  they  are  doing  here  in  this  coun- 
try." Beside  him  stood  the  Dutch  Minister,  who 
at    once     spoke     with     equal    heartiness,    "  All    the 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  287 

rest  of  us  are  in  this  land  for  what  we  can  make ;  the 
missionaries  are  the  only  people  here  for  the  sake  of 
what  they  can  give."  Recall  Mr.  Kipling's  poem  descri- 
bing the  work  of  the  British  soldier  in  Africa.  Magnify 
it  in  the  way  it  must  be  magnifiel,  and  consider  all  the 
material  power  that  is  back  of  what  the  British  soldier 
has  done  in  Egypt,  and  you  will  begin  to  get  some  faint 
idea  of  the  work  that  the  missionaries  are  doing  all  over 
Asia,  demoralizing  old  superstitions,  changing  the 
whole  course  of  the  development  of  nations,  establish- 
ing a  sense  of  justice  where  none  existed  before,  gather- 
ing out  of  peoples,  with  whom  confession  of  Christ 
means  everlasting  ostracism,  little  groups  of  men  and 
women,  who  confess  Christ  with  a  loyalty  and  faithful- 
ness that  ought  to  put  us  to  shame  here  in  these  lands 
where  confession  of  Christ  and  service  for  Him  are 
so  easy. 

I  think  one  difficulty  in  the  way  of  our  proper  ap- 
preciation is  that  we  never  see  the  missionary  except 
under  unfavourable  circumstances.  We  see  him  when 
he  comes  back  here  after  being  buried  in  a  heathen 
land  for  seven  or  eight  years.  There  came  into  my 
office  one  day,  a  young  man,  a  graduate  of  a 
Southern  University.  I  had  known  him  for  a  great 
many  years  as  a  man  of  singular  readiness  of  thought, 
and  I  wondered  that  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
he  sat  there  saying  scarcely  a  word.  "  What  has  come 
over  you  ?  "  I  said,  at  last.  "  You  have  not  made  a  re- 
mark since  you  came  here  except  in  answer  to  direct 
questions."  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  for  six  years  I  have 
been  living  on  the  Bonin  Islands  to  the  south  of  Japan, 
practically  alone,  and  I  have  lost  my  bearings  with 
reference  to  civilization ;  I  cannot  adjust  myself  to  the 
old  life  again ;  I  have  been  afraid  all  the  time  T  would 
make  a  slip,  and  to  be  on  the  safe  side  I  just  say  noth- 


288       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ing  at  all."  Any  one  who  has  been  long  in  Asia  can 
appreciate  this.  One  cannot  have  the  same  old  con- 
fidence that  he  understands  the  point  of  view  of  the 
people  here  with  whom  he  is  speaking.  He  can- 
not have  the  same  old  freedom  in  addressing  them, 
the  same  effrontery,  nor  the  same  confidence  in  know- 
ing just  where  to  hit  and  to  refrain  from  hitting  in 
his  dealings  with  them.  I  think  many  missionaries 
come  home  who  have  been  saturated  for  seven 
or  eight  years  with  the  life  that  is  round  about  them, 
adjusting  themselves  to  it,  doing  their  work  among 
a  primitive  elementary  people,  and  they  find  it  diffi- 
cult in  a  few  months  to  re-adjust  themselves.  If  we 
could  see  them  at  their  work  away  down  at  the 
dark  foundations  of  human  life,  hewing  corrupt  and 
rotten  peoples  out  of  their  depth  of  degradation,  and 
drawing,  with  the  very  power  of  Him  who  said  "  I,  if  I 
be  lifted  up  will  draw  all  men  unto  Me," — drawing 
men,  communities,  multitudes,  nations,  we  should  have 
a  much  higher  judgment  of  these  men  and  women 
than  we  have. 

There  comes  up  before  my  mind  the  picture  of  some 
missionaries  at  their  work.  One  afternoon,  in 
Southern  China,  we  were  hailed  across  a  stream  by  a 
voice  we  instantly  recognized  as  belonging  to  our  own 
people,  and  we  immediately  stopped  our  boat.  The 
voice  came  from  another  boat  that  was  near  by,  and 
a  young  woman  leaned  out  of  the  door  of  the  other 
boat.  She  was  dressed  in  Chinese  dress,  a  young  wo- 
man of  perhaps  thirty  years  of  age.  She  had  come 
from  Georgia,  and  had  been  a  missionary  in  China 
for  some  years.  We  tried  to  persuade  her  to  join  us 
and  go  back  to  Canton.  "  No,"  she  said,  she  would 
have  to  do  that  presently,  for  she  could  not  be  buried 
forever  without  getting  a  breath  of  fresh  Christian 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  289 

atmosphere  some  time;  but  she  could  stand  it  a  little 
longer,  and  she  would  go  back  alone  until  the  time 
came  when  she  would  return  to  her  station  to  mingle 
for  a  little  while  with  her  own  people.  I  see  an- 
other woman  some  sixty  years  of  age,  working  in 
central  Persia.  She  has  lived  for  months  in  that  mud 
house,  in  that  Moslem  village  without  anyone  who 
can  understand  her,  working  among  those  narrow- 
minded  Moslem  women,  and  she  was  not  afraid, 
and  she  was  not  retreating,  but  she  intended  to 
stay  a  little  longer,  so  long  as  weak  flesh  could 
endure,  to  preach  Christ's  gospel  to  these  poor 
women,  who  had  never  heard  the  message  of  His  love. 
There  are  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  such  men  and 
women  as  these  scattered  all  over  the  world.  They  are 
the  true  representatives  of  Him  "  who  though  He 
was  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes  became  poor  that  we 
through  His  poverty  might  be  rich," — of  Him  who 
though  in  the  form  of  God  counted  it  not  a  prize  to  be 
jealously  retained,  to  be  on  an  equality  with  God, 
"  but  made  Himself  of  no  reputation,  and  took  upon 
Him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  became  obedient  unto 
death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross." 

And  I  have  a  new  respect  for  the  solidity  of  the 
methods  that  Christian  missions  are  using.  I  know 
they  are  criticized  from  two  diverse  points  of  view.  A 
lawyer  was  criticizing  missions  a  short  time  ago  in 
my  hearing,  because  they  were  too  individualistic — 
that  is,  seeking  to  save  individual  souls.  They  did  not 
concern  themselves  enough  with  modifying  the  social 
atmosphere ;  they  did  not  regard  sufficiently  the  change 
of  political  development.  He  thought  missions  ought 
to  set  themselves  more  to  influence  the  great  social 
movements,  and  less  to  dealing  with  individual  lives. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  methods  of  our  missions  are 


290       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

criticized  from  precisely  the  opposite  point  of  view — 
because  they  are  not  individualistic  enough;  they  aim 
too  much  at  institutionalism ;  their  efforts  are  too 
strongly  directed  at  the  foundation  of  a  future  work, 
and  not  sufficiently  at  doing  a  work  for  the  present 
time,  regardless  of  the  future  altogether.  I  wonder 
whether,  after  all,  it  is  not  the  best  testimony  that 
could  be  paid  to  the  good  judgment  of  the  missionaries 
— to  the  solidity  of  their  missionary  methods — that  they 
satisfy  people  at  neither  extreme. 

We  can  modify  our  mission  methods ;  we  can  modify 
them,  on  one  hand,  by  expecting  of  human  nature  what 
you  will  never  get  from  it,  or  on  the  other  hand  by 
abandoning  our  evangelical  convictions,  not  otherwise. 
And  yet  there  is  a  way  in  which  we  can  modify  and 
improve  our  Christian  missions,  and  that  is  by  modify- 
ing and  improving  our  Christian  churches  at  home. 
What  are  the  missionaries?  What  we  all,  men  and 
women,  are,  so  are  they.  They  are  precisely  the  kind 
of  Christians  that  we  have  in  our  churches  at 
home, — a  little  better,  but  the  same  kind.  Do 
we  demand  of  our  missionaries  more  sacrifice? 
There  is  one  and  only  one  way  to  secure  it,  and  that 
is  by  having  more  sacrifice  in  the  home  churches.  Do 
we  demand  of  them  a  different  grade  of  Christian  life? 
There  is  one  and  only  one  sure  way  of  obtaining  it, 
and  that  is  by  adopting  a  different  grade  of  life  in  the 
home  churches..  We  cannot  expect  of  the  mission 
movement  what  is  not  in  the  church.  The  missionaries 
go  out  into  the  mission  field  with  the  ideals  existing  in 
the  home  church,  with  the  consecration  of  the  home 
church,  with  the  devotion  that  marks  the  home  church. 
Every  criticism  levelled  at  the  devotion,  the  consecra- 
tion of  Christian  missionaries  is  levelled,  not  at  them, 
but  at  the  churches  of  which  thev  are  the  children. 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  291 

Would  we  have  more  constancy  on  the  part  of  our 
missionaries?  Would  we  have  more  devotion  on  the 
part  of  our  missionaries?  Would  we  have  them  filled 
with  the  power  of  the  Spirit  of  God?  Let  us  raise  the 
standard  of  our  home  church  devotion,  and  fill  our 
churches  with  the  power  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  We 
cannot  abandon  our  evangelical  convictions  at  home, 
and  swing  loose  into  broad  socialistic  views  of  Chris- 
tianity; we  cannot  cease  to  lay  emphasis  where  Paul 
laid  it,  on  individual  redemption,  and  begin  to  lay  it 
on  the  redemption  of  classes  or  nations  without  having 
this  change  among  us  inevitably  alifect  our  missions 
abroad.  Here  at  home  we  need  a  revived  sense  of  the 
value  of  the  individual  soul,  a  larger  personal  loyalty  to 
Christ,  an  abandonment  of  all  those  petty,  little  self-in- 
dulgences that  are  becoming  characteristic  marks  of 
people.  Christian  and  non-Christian  alike.  As  we  lift 
the  whole  grade  of  our  home  Christian  life,  we  shall 
lift  the  whole  grade  of  our  missionary  enterprises ;  and 
until  then  we  shall  go  forward  just  as  we  are  with  the 
whole  mission  work  a  little  better,  a  little  more  conse- 
crated, a  little  more  devoted,  a  little  more  self-sacri- 
ficing than  the  home  church  is,  because  it  is  the  best  we 
have  who  are  representing  us  there. 

The  last  impression  of  which  I  would  speak  here  is 
the  certainty  of  the  ultimate  success  of  this  work.  Let 
it  be  very  clearly  stated  that  there  is  a  possibility  of 
our  over-emphasizing  the  significance  of  such  an  im- 
pression. What  difference  does  it  make  whether  we 
succeed  or  not  ?  I  recall  the  way  in  which  an  old  Brit- 
ish colonel,  whom  I  met  on  the  Pacific  in  coming 
home,  spoke  about  the  people  in  his  old  parish  in 
England,  who  held  aloof  from  the  missionary  enter- 
prise because  they  were  afraid  the  work  was  not 
going  to  succeed,  and  they  did  not  feel  like  making 


292        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

any  investments  in  it.  "  That  is  not  the  spirit  we 
tolerate  in  the  army,"  he  said.  "  We  do  not  qualify 
obedience  by  our  opinions  as  to  the  success  of  this 
work  or  that  which  is  ordered.  When  we  want  the 
men  to  do  a  thing,  it  is  done ;  and  I  despise  these  people 
for  whom  the  clear  and  unqualified  commands  of 
Christ  arc  not  enough."  I  remember  how  nonplussed 
I  was  when  asked  on  returning  the  question,  "  Have 
you  been  encouraged  by  what  you  have  seen  ?  "  I 
never  had  looked  at  missions  from  the  point  of  view 
of  being  encouraged  or  discouraged.  What  we  had 
seen  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  our  convictions 
as  to  the  missionary  enterprise.  That  enterprise  rests 
on  foundations  so  solid  that  they  are  not  affected  in 
any  way  by  cither  the  success  or  failure  of  missionary 
work,  namely,  the  world's  needs,  the  last  command 
of  Christ,  the  expansive  nature  of  Christianity.  These 
are  the  considerations  upon  which  the  missionary 
movement  rests,  and  will  rest,  whether  it  succeeds  or 
not. 

But  it  must  be  confessed  also  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  which  is  discouraging  in  connection  with  mis- 
sionary work.  How  much  there  is  that  is  discourag- 
ing in  the  way  in  which  the  home  churches  nullify 
and  frustrate  the  very  purposes  of  their  missionaries, 
undoing  much  of  what  their  missionaries  have  done, 
breaking  down  what  they  are  trying  to  accomplish  in 
the  way  of  self-support,  lavishing  their  money  on 
men  and  enterprises  of  which  tlie  missionaries  cannot 
approve.  If  you  could  go  out  and  sec  the  missionaries 
you  would  understand  how  much  discouragement 
comes  through  Christians  at  home.  When  after  a 
whole  generation's  toil  they  have  just  begun  to  build 
up  a  self-supporting  church,  and  some  adventurer 
comes    over    to    this    country    and    works    upon    the 


Impressions  of  Christian  Missions  in  Asia  293 

sympathies,  and  fills  his  pockets  with  the  contributions 
of  American  Christians,  and  then  goes  back  and 
spreads  the  impression  that  there  is  no  need  of  follow- 
ing out  the  economical  methods  of  the  missionaries, 
presently  their  whole  staff  of  native  workers  is  dis- 
turbed and  broken. 

There  is  enough  of  a  discouraging  character  in  the 
foreign  field  without  our  adding  to  the  difficulties  by 
unwise  generosity.  Century  after  century  has  passed, 
and  we  have  made  but  a  slight  impression  on 
Islam.  The  Christian  Church  has  shirked  her 
task.  I  know  of  nothing  more  significant  in 
Church  history  than  the  way  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  refrained  from  sending  missionaries 
to  Mohammedanism.  As  we  stand  face  to  face 
with  Islam  there  is  much  discouragement  there; 
also  in  the  wreck  of  the  Doshisha ;  in  the  smoking 
villages,  the  outraged  women,  the  murdered  husbands 
among  the  Armenians,  and  the  little  orphanages 
springing  up  that  tell  the  story  of  the  work  of  the 
missionaries.  There  is  a  great  deal  that  is  discourag- 
ing. And  yet  we  cannot  look  back  over  a  century 
without  being  able  in  some  measure  to  discern 
those  great  forces  that  are  pressing  on  always  towards 
the  great  goals  of  God, 

"  That  far  ofif  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

It  is  true  that  there  is  much  that  is  dark  and  dis- 
couraging, but  we  will  not  find  in  all  the  world  an 
enterprise  that  has  achieved  such  success  as  this, 
an  enterprise  that  is  sweeping  men,  communities  and 
nations  into  the  kingdom  of  God.     It  is  changing  the 


294       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

character  of  the  peoples  of  the  earth.     Very  dark  at 
times  it  all  seems;  but  whoever  will  may 

"  Hear  at  times  a  sentinel 
Who  moves  about  from  place  to  place, 
And  whispers  to  the  worlds  of  space, 
In  the  deep  night,  that  all  is  well. 

And  all  is  well,  though  faith  and  form 
Be  sundered  in  the  night  of  fear; 
Well  roars  the  storm  to  those  that  hear 

A  deeper  voice  across  the  storm." 

Would  that  the  Spirit  of  God  might  call  us  to  per- 
ceive that  this  is  what  we  are  sent  into  the  world  for, 
that  this  is  what  the  Church  of  Christ  is  set  here  for — 
not  as  a  spiritual  house  of  horticulture,  not  as  a  little  en- 
closed palisaded  ground  in  which  a  few  individuals  may 
develop  their  own  spiritual  dispositions.  The  Christian 
Church  is  here  with  a  view  to  the  multitude  beyond 
who  wait  to  hear  the  story  of  the  life  and  the  death  and 
the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ.  And  they  will  hear.  If  we 
fail  to  share  in  the  glorious  work  of  telling  them,  others 
will  tell,  and  have  the  privilege,  and  receive  the  reward, 
and  the  glory.  Jesus  Christ  proposes  to  reign  over 
this  world.  It  is  not  His  loss  but  ours,  if  we  do  not 
take  a  share,  and  a  share  as  large  as  our  life  and  its 
opportunities,  in  the  work  of  bringing  in  His  kingdom. 


XXIV 

PERSIAN  MOHAMMEDANS  AND  MOHAMMEDAN- 

ISM 

ISLAM,  almost  more  than  South  America,  is  en- 
titled to  the  name  of  the  "  Neglected."  More  than 
seven  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  days  of  the  cru- 
sades, Raymond  Lull  strove  nobly,  but  in  vain, 
to  sweep  Christendom  into  a  great  missionary 
movement  for  the  conversion  of  the  Moslem,  de- 
claring, "  I  see  many  knights  going  to  the  Holy 
Land  in  the  expectation  of  conquering  it  by  force 
of  arms;  but  instead  of  accomplishing  their  object, 
they  are  in  the  end  all  swept  off  themselves 
Therefore  it  is  my  belief  that  the  conquest  of 
the  Holy  Land  should  be  attempted  in  no  other  way 
than  as  Thou  (Christ)  and  Thy  apostles  undertook 
to  accomplish  it — by  love,  by  prayer,  by  tears,  and  the 
offering  up  of  our  own  lives."  Since  Raymond  Lull's 
failure  to  call  Christendom  forth  to  a  true  crusade  of 
Christ  not  against,  but  for  the  Moslem,  the  Christian 
Church  has  sent  out  her  missionaries  by  the  hundred 
and  the  thousand  to  Hindu,  Buddhist,  and  Confucian, 
and  has  passed  Lslam  almost  wholly  by.  Even  the 
Church  of  Rome,  brave  to  the  point  of  utter  sacrifice  in 
every  other  enterprise,  shuns  it.  Only  here  and  there 
little  groups  of  men  have  been  standing  as  advance 
guards  at  the  gates  of  Mohammedanism  which  even  in 
its  decrepitude  they  have  not  ventured  boldly  to  assail. 
In  this  general  neglect  of  the  peoples  and  lands  sub- 
ject to  the  faith  of  Islam,  Persia  has  naturally  shared. 
Henry  Martyn  visited  the  country  in  i8ii  and  passed 
through  on  his  way  to  his  death  at  Tokat,  but  he  was 

295 


296       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

enfeebled  by  disease  and  gave  most  of  his  time  to  the 
work  of  translating  the  New  Testament  and  Psalms. 
This  translation  he  wished  to  present  to  the  king,  be- 
fore he  passed  on.  The  greeting  he  received  is  worth 
quoting  in  his  own  words,  as  explanatory  of  the  con- 
stant tone  of  Islam  toward  Christianity  and  of  the 
Church's  timidity  in  facing  its  great  problem : 

"  June  1 2th  I  attended  the  vizier's  levee  when  there 
was  a  most  intemperate  and  clamorous  controversy 
kept  up  for  an  hour  or  two,  eight  or  ten  on  one  side 
and  I  on  the  other.  The  vizier,  who  set  us  going  first, 
joined  in  it  latterly  and  said,  '  You  had  better  say  God 
is  God  and  Mohammed  is  the  prophet  of  God.'  I 
said,  '  God  is  God,'  but  added,  instead  of  '  Mohammed 
is  the  prophet  of  God,'  '  and  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God.' 
They  had  no  sooner  heard  this,  which  I  had  avoided 
bringing  forward  until  then,  than  they  all  exclaimed 
in  contempt  and  anger,  '  He  is  neither  born  nor  begets,' 
(Koran,  Sura  cxii.)  and  rose  up  as  if  they  would  have 
torn  me  in  pieces.  One  of  them  said :  '  What  will 
you  say  when  your  tongue  is  burned  out  for  this  blas- 
phemy ? '  One  of  them  felt  for  me  a  little  and  tried 
to  soften  the  severity  of  this  speech.  My  book,  which 
I  had  brought,  expecting  to  present  it  to  the  king,  lay 
before  Mirza  Shufi.  As  they  all  rose  up,  after  him,  to 
go,  some  to  the  king  and  some  away,  I  was  afraid 
they  would  trample  upon  the  book,  so  I  went  among 
them  to  take  it  up,  and  wrapped  it  in  a  towel  before 
them,  while  they  looked  at  it  and  me  with  supreme 
contempt.  Thus  I  walked  away  alone  to  pass  the  rest 
of  the  day  in  heat  and  dirt.  What  have  I  done, 
thought  I,  to  merit  all  this  scorn?  Nothing,  thought 
I,  but  bearing  testimony  to  Jesus.  I  thought  over 
these  things  in  prayer,  and  found  that  peace  which 
Christ  hath  promised  to  His  disciples." 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism     297 

The  next  visitor  to  Persia,  who  came  to  preach 
Christ,  was  Dr.  Pfander,  in  1829,  who  wrote  The 
Balance  of  Truth,  a  book  setting  forth  the  compara- 
tive evidence  of  Christianity  and  Islam,  whose  mis- 
sion is  not  yet  ended.  The  same  year  Messrs.  Smith 
and  Dwight,  of  the  American  Board,  were  sent  to 
explore  the  Nestorian  section  of  the  province  of  Azer- 
baijan, and  their  visit  led  to  the  first  permanent  Protes- 
tant missionary  work  in  Persia,  and  the  foundation  in 
1835  of  the  fruitful  mission  to  the  Nestorians.  In 
1833  also  the  Basle  society  established  work  at  Tabriz, 
which  was  broken  up  by  the  bigotry  of  the  people 
four  years'  later,  and  not  renewed.  William  Glen,  a 
Scotch  missionary,  came  in  1838,  with  a  translation 
of  the  Old  Testament  into  Persian,  partially  com- 
pleted. In  1847  he  finished  it,  and  combining  it  with 
Martyn's  New  Testament,  supplied  Persia  with  the 
Bible.  Dr.  Robert  Bruce  came  to  Persia  in  1869,  and 
led  the  Church  Missionary  Society  to  undertake  work 
at  Julfa,  near  Ispahan,  in  1876.  Swedish  and  German 
missionaries  have  been  located  in  Azerbaijan  from  time 
to  time,  but  the  former  are  now  withdrawn.  The  Ro- 
man Catholics  have  worked  for  years  among  the  Ar- 
menians in  Teheran  and  Salmas  and  maintained  a  feeble 
mission  in  Urumia.  In  1888  a  mission  to  the  Nestorians, 
called  "  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury's  Mission,"  of 
high  Anglican  tendencies  and  methods  was  established 
in  Urumia  after  many  vicissitudes.  There  has  been 
some  sporadic  special  work  for  Jews,  and  the  English 
and  American  Bible  societies  have  had  agents  at  work. 
The  Nestorian  mission,  founded  in  1835,  under  the 
American  Board,  has  grown  into  the  extensive  work 
of  the  two  missions  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  with 
centres  at  Urumia,  Tabriz,  Teheran,  and  Hamadan, 
and  the  work  of  Persia's  evangelization  is  committed 


298        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  these  missions,  and  the  mission  of  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society,  which  have  agreed  to  divide  the 
field  between  them  by  a  hne  running  from  the  eastern 
border  of  Persia  along  the  thirty-fourth  parallel  of 
latitude  to  Kashan,  and  thence  southwest  to  Khoram- 
abad  and  the  Turkish  border.  The  8,000,000  or  9,- 
000,000  people  of  Persia  are  dependent  upon  these 
little  companies  for  their  knowledge  of  the  gospel. 

The  missionary  work  in  Persia  is  surrounded  by 
difficult  and  grave  limitations.  There  are,  perhaps, 
75,000  or  100,000  Nestorians,  Armenians,  Jews,  and 
Parsees  m  Persia.  The  rest  of  the  population  is  re- 
garded as  Moslem.  Now  the  Koran  nowhere  states 
that  an  apostate  is  to  be  put  to  death,  but  according 
to  Al  Beidawi  there  are  three  crimes  for  which  a  man 
may  justly  be  put  to  death,  apostasy,  adultery,  and 
murder  (Sale's  Koran,  ed.  1887,  p.  209),  and  con- 
verts from  Islam  in  Persia  have  been  killed,  not  pro- 
fessedly, but  in  reality,  because  of  their  change  of  re- 
ligion. Moreover,  there  have  been  several  firmans  is- 
sued by  the  Shah  affirming  the  right  of  the  people  of 
other  than  the  Moslem  religion  to  change  their  re- 
ligion if  they  wish.  Such  a  statement  of  the  religious 
liberty  of  non-Moslems  is  its  denial  to  Moslems.  The 
withdrawal  of  the  German  missionaries  from  Urumia, 
a  few  years  ago,  was  at  the  instance  of  the  Persian 
government,  which  made  their  aggressive  work  among 
Moslems  the  pretext  for  its  action.  The  bolder  stand 
of  the  C.  M.  S.  missionaries  at  Ispahan  has  recently 
led  to  no  little  discussion  and  condemnation.  English 
missionaries  are  not  so  easily  expelled,  however.  Con- 
versation with  Moslems  on  the  subject  of  religion  has 
never  been  forbidden,  and  a  sort  of  formal  permission 
was  even  given  some  years  ago  in  Teheran  to  men  to 
visit    the    mission    chapel ;    but    apostasy    has    almost 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism     299 

always  met,  and  for  years  is  likely  to  meet,  in  some 
form,  speedy  retribution,  and  an  open  and  earnest 
propaganda  among  JMoslems,  on  the  part  of  either  mis- 
sion, would  undoubtedly  lead  to  the  expulsion  of  its 
missionaries  from  the  country.  It  has  been  necessary, 
therefore,  to  carry  on  missionary  work  in  Persia  with 
great  tact  and  much  quietness,  devoting  time  and 
strength  primarily  to  the  non-Moslem  populations.  It 
was,  indeed,  for  the  Nestorians  that  the  American  mis- 
sion was  founded,  and  though  it  is,  I  believe,  one  of 
the  principles  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  not 
to  send  missions  to  the  Oriental  Churches,  its  mission 
at  Ispahan,  pending  the  dawn  of  religious  liberty,  is 
devoted  largely  to  the  vitalization  of  the  Armenian 
churches  in  its  territory.  Nestorians,  Armenians,  and 
Jews,  accordingly,  constitute  the  present  open  field  of 
missionary  work  in  Persia.  General  Schindler  gives 
the  number  of  these  as  Jews,  19,000;  Armenians,  43,- 
000;  Nestorians,  23,000,  which  Curzon  regards  as  in 
each  case  an  underestimate.  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  census  in  Persia,  of  course,  the  government  being 
incapable  of  undertaking  such  a  work,  and  the  ecclesi- 
astical authorities  being  averse  to  it.  Judging  from 
his  estimate  of  the  Nestorians,  however,  Schindler  is 
not  far  out  of  the  way.  Of  these  three  classes,  the 
Nestorians  present  the  most  favourable  field  for  mis- 
sionary work.  They  are  a  religious  people,  of  many 
childlike  characteristics,  patient,  dignified,  dependent. 
The  Persian  Armenians  are  a  difficult  class— money- 
seeking,  self-satisfied,  not  very  tractable,  ambitious, 
and  active,  "  loving  this  present  world,"  as  one  of 
them  put  it  in  Tabriz,  "  and  seeking  the  Kingdom  of 
God  last."  Curzon's  judgment,  while  not  wholly  just 
either  to  Nestorian  or  Armenian,  is  not  without  dis- 
crimination.      The  Nestorians,  he  says,  are  "docile. 


300       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

law-abiding,  and  industrious.  They  are  a  warm- 
hearted people,  prone  to  hospitality,  fond  of  festivity, 
and  neither  so  precocious  nor  so  crafty  as  the  Arme- 
nians. On  the  other  hand,  they  are  very  quarrelsome 
amongst  themselves,  are  avaricious  of  money,  and  in- 
curably addicted  to  mendicancy,  and  sixty  years  of 
missionary  effort  have  not  taught  them  that  there  is 
any  virtue  in  truth  or  any  call  for  private  honour." 
This  last  judgment  rests  on  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Athel- 
stan  Riley,  which  is  not  wholly  reliable.  "  The  Per- 
sian Armenians,"  adds  Mr.  Curzon,  "  are  a  less  pro- 
lific, less  gregarious,  and  less  stay-at-home,  .  .  . 
a  less  attractive,  and  an  even  less  reliable  people  than 
the  mendacious,  but  peaceable,  Nestorians.  They 
travel  a  great  deal  and  pick  up  revolutionary  ideas, 
and  are  disposed  to  deceit  and  turbulence."  (Cur- 
zon's  Persia,  London  ed.  1892,  vol.  II.,  pp.  544- 
548.)  The  Jews  are  scattered  through  the  cities  of 
Persia,  where  they  can  live  together.  Unlike  the 
Armenians,  they  do  not  settle  in  villages  predominantly 
Moslem.  Everywhere  they  are  subject  to  painful  dis- 
abilities. They  are  usually  the  first  victims  of  the 
bigotry  of  a  mob,  easily  aroused  anywhere  by  an  ap- 
peal to  fanaticism.  At  Ispahan,  where  they  are  said 
to  be  in  a  better  position  than  elsewhere  in  Persia, 
"  they  are  not  permitted  to  wear  the  kolah,  or  Persian 
head-dress,  to  have  shops  in  the  bazaar,  to  build  the 
walls  of  their  houses  as  high  as  a  Moslem  neighbour, 
or  to  ride  in  the  streets."  In  Hamadan  it  is  not  an  in- 
frequent thing  for  the  missionaries  to  hear  the  roar 
of  some  street  mob,  stirred  up  by  the  mollahs,  and 
bound  for  the  Jewish  quarter.  Of  even  his  primacy 
in  bargain  and  trade  the  Jew  has  been  deprived  by  the 
Armenian,  who  will  invariably  outwit  the  Jew,  and 
who  engages  in  the  main  in  the  more  respectable  lines 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism     301 

of  business,  leaving  the  peddling  and  petty  trading  to 
the  Jew.  Many  Jews  in  Persia  have  accepted  the 
gospel,  however.  There  is  a  small  organized  Jewish 
church  in  Hamadan,  and  not  a  few  Jewish  young 
men  have  received  the  best  medical  training  available 
in  Persia  in  the  mission  schools  and  under  the  medi- 
cal missionaries. 

But  it  is  neither  of  the  difficulties  nor  of  the  success 
of  the  mission  work  among  non-Moslems  that  I 
wish  to  treat  here.  It  is  of  Persian  Mohammedans 
and  Mohammedanism  as  the  ultimate  field  of  mis- 
sionary work;  for  while  the  missionaries  and  their 
supporters  are  law-abiding  and  honest,  and  are  at 
work  for  those  for  whom  they  are  free  to  work,  it  is 
manifest  to  any  one  that  their  work  touches,  and  is 
affecting  the  established  religion.  Whatever  the  diffi- 
culties, moreover,  and  however  long  it  may  have  to 
wait,  the  Christian  Church  assuredly  proposes  to  meet 
Islam  face  to  face  on  every  field  now  in  Islam's  pos- 
session, and  to  reclaim  those  fields  for  the  great  God, 
the  compassionate,  the  merciful,  whose  prophet  Mo- 
hammed claimed  to  be,  and  for  His  Christ. 

In  preparation  for  that  day  and  in  all  consideration 
of  the  Mohammedan  missionary  problem,  it  needs  to 
be  kept  in  mind  that  Persian  Mohammedanism  is  not 
the  same  as  the  Mohammedanism  of  India,  or  Africa, 
or  the  Ottoman  Empire.  The  Persian  Moslems  are 
schismatics.  Their  very  name  "  Shiahs  "  means  "  Sec- 
taries." It  seems  strange,  as  Sale  suggests,  that  Spi- 
noza should  have  been  ignorant  of  this  notorious  di- 
vision, and  should  "  have  assigned  as  the  reason  for 
preferring  the  order  of  the  Mohammedan  Church  to 
that  of  the  Roman,  that  there  have  arisen  no  schisms 
in  the  former  since  its  birth."  The  same  mistake  is 
frequently  made,  however,  in  our  own  day.     The  unity 


3oa       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  Islam  is  held  up  as  a  rebuke  tj  divided  Christendom. 
But  Mohammedans  would  not  be  grateful  for  thi 
conspicuousness.  They  say  "  The  Magians  are  di- 
vided into  seventy  sects,  the  Jews  into  seventy-one, 
the  Christians  into  seventy-two  and  the  Moslems  into 
seventy-three,  as  Mohammed  had  foretold."  More- 
over they  have  advanced  beyond  Christendom  in  this 
that  only  one  sect  is  entitled  to  salvation  in  their  view, 
each  sect  holding  the  others  damnable.  Historically 
innumerable  sects  have  developed.  Since  1492 
the  Persian  Moslems  have  been  Shiahs,  and  be- 
tween them  and  the  Sunnis,  the  orthodox  body  to 
which  the  Turks  belong,  there  is  deep  hostility 
and  bitterness,  where,  indeed,  the  decadence  of  Islam 
has  left  any  sincere  feeling,  at  all.  The  chief  points 
of  difference  between  Sunnite  and  Shiah  are : 

"  I.  That  the  Shiahs  reject  Abu  Bekr,  Omar,  and 
Othman,  the  three  first  Caliphs,  as  usurpers  and  in- 
truders ;  whereas  the  Sunnis  acknowledge  and  respect 
them  as  rightful  Imams.  2.  The  Shiahs  prefer  Ali 
(the  cousin  of  Mohammed  who  married  his  daugh- 
ter, Fatima,  and  the  fourth  Caliph)  to  Mohammed, 
or,  at  least,  esteem  the  two  equal ;  but  the  Sunnis  admit 
neither  Ali  nor  any  of  the  prophets  to  be  equal  to 
Mohammed.  3.  The  Sunnis  charge  the'  Shiahs  with 
corrupting  the  Koran  and  neglecting  its  precepts,  and 
the  Shiahs  retort  the  same  charge  on  the  Sunnis.  4. 
The  Sunnis  receive  the  Sunna,  or  book  of  traditions 
of  their  prophet,  as  of  canonical  authority,  whereas 
the  Shiahs  reject  it  as  apocrvphal  and  unworthy  of 
credit."  (Sale's  Koran,  ed.  1887.  Introductory 
Essay,  p.  138.) 

The  chief  point  to  be  noted  is  that  the  Shiahs  be- 
lieve Ali  to  have  been  lawful  Caliph  and  Imam  and 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism     303 

hold  that  the  supreme  authority  in  all  things,  spiritual 
and  temporal,  State  no  less  than  Church,  of  right  be- 
longs to  his  descendants.  This  right  they  do  not  enjoy 
in  Persia.  The  civil  power  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Kajar 
dynasty.  The  Kajars  are  Turks,  in  no  wise  connected 
with  the  family  of  Ali.  According  to  the  strict  faith 
of  the  Shiahs  they  are  usurpers  of  authority  belong- 
ing to  All's  descendants,  in  whose  hands  is  the  ecclesi- 
astical power.  There  is  a  very  real  separation,  ac- 
cordingly, between  Church  and  State  in  Persia,  more 
real  than  exists  in  many  Christian  lands.  In  Islam, 
using  the  word  in  its  popular  sense,  such  a  condition 
as  this  is  a  logical  contradiction.  Mohammed's  Islam, 
the  Islam  of  the  Caliphs  was  the  State.  It  grew  by  ap- 
pealing to  those  motives  which  only  civil  power  could 
satisfy  and  by  making  such  promises  as  only  Islam 
as  a  political  and  military  organization  could  fulfil. 
Deprived  of  the  power  of  appealing  to  such  motives 
and"  of  making  such  promises  and  reduced  to  a  relig- 
ion merely,  Islam  ceases  to  be  Islam.  To  this  con- 
dition Persian  Mohammedanism  is  practically  re- 
duced. It  is  only  a  religion  here.  It  is  the  established 
religion.  The  State  does  for  it  what  Christian  States, 
with  established  religions,  do  not  do  for  them,  but 
it  does  not  subsidize  it  financially,  as  Christian  States 
do.  But  Mohammedanism  cannot  endure,  robbed 
of  its  political  character.  It  may  become  a  modified, 
modernized  Islam  but  it  will  not  be  Mohammedanism, 
It  will  have  to  take  its  place  among  the  world's  re- 
ligions not  as  a  political  institution,  but  as  a  system 
of  morals  and  faith.  This  is  what  Mohammedanism 
has  had  to  do  in  Persia.  It  controls  the  passage  of 
property,  and  still  possesses  many  political  advantages. 
The  civil  power  has  by  no  means  wholly  triumphed 
over  it.     There  are  even  indications  that  the  present 


304        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Shah  may  surrender  something-  of  what  his  father  had 
gained  in  his  long  struggle  with  the  mollahs.  But 
Islam  has  been  obhged  radically  to  change  its  char- 
acter and  Shiah  Mohammedanism  must  become  less 
and  less  true  to  Mohammed's  principles  and  less  and 
less  like  the  Mohan-.medanism  of  Abu-Bekr  and  the 
world-conquering  Caliphs  and  more  and  more  a  re- 
ligion simply  with  no  appeal  save  to  the  conscience  and 
intellect  of  man. 

From  this  deadly  separation  the  Sunni  Moham- 
medanism of  the  Turk  has  been  fictitiously  saved.  His 
Sultan  has  been  his  Caliph,  too.  Legally  the  Caliphate 
belongs  to  the  Prophet's  family  of  the  Koreish.  After 
the  dismal  end  of  the  Abbassid  dynasty  of  Caliphs  in 
1258,  a  mock  Caliphate  was  set  up  and  maintained  in 
Egypt.  This  came  to  an  end  with  the  conquest  of 
Egypt  b}^  Selim  I.,  Sultan  of  the  Osmanlis,  to  whose 
successor,  Suleiman,  Muttawakkli,  the  last  of  the  pup- 
pet Caliphs  of  Egypt  and  a  descendant  from  the  thirty- 
fifth  Caliph  of  Bagdad,  svirrcndered  his  supposed 
rights,  so  that  the  Osmanli  sultans  to  this  day  have 
claimed  to  be  the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  political  suc- 
cessors of  Mohammed.  The  claim  is  a  poor  dream, 
mocked  at  by  the  Hindus,  Persians,  and  Moors,  but  it 
has  saved  Sunni  Islam  from  the  present  fate  of  the 
Shiah  faith.  (Muir's  Caliphate,  London  ed.  1892,  pp. 
589-594.)  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  pressure 
of  civilization  and  the  better  Christian  ideals,  and  the 
general  onward  sweep  of  human  life  have  deprived 
even  the  Sunni  Moslem  of  the  sanctions  and  incentives 
which  made  the  faith  of  the  Arabs  vital,  irresistible. 

Deprived  of  its  military  character,  and  denied  po- 
litical authority,  though  it  administers  still  a  good 
share  of  the  civil  law,  and  usurps  political  power 
wherever  local  officials  are  too  weak  to  resist,  Shiah 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    305 

Mohammedanism  has  had  good  opportunity  to  develop 
its  religious,  ethical  and  social  fruits.  What  have  been 
the  results?  In  social  life,  Mohammedanism  never 
conceived  a  home.  In  Persian  there  are  no  distinct 
words  for  wife  and  home.  The  words  for  woman  and 
houses  serve  instead.  The  Prophet's  example  and 
teaching,  the  supposed  revelation  of  God  in  the  Koran, 
made  it  certain  that  IMohammcdan  life  should  forever 
lack  all  that  for  which  in  our  Christian  life  the  home 
stands.  "  Of  other  women  who  seem  good  in  your 
eyes,"  said  the  Prophet,  "  marry  but  two  or  three  or 
four."  (Rodwell's  Koran,  London  ed.,  1876,  Sura 
iv.,  3,  p.  451.)  "  Who  control  their  desires,  save  with 
their  wives  or  the  slaves  whom  their  right  hands  have 
won, — in  that  case  verily  they  shall  be  blameless ;  .  . 
these  shall  dwell,  laden  with  honours,  amid  gardens." 
(Idem,  Sura  Ixx,  29,  30,  35,  p.  60.)  Thus  Moham- 
med granted  his  followers  in  all  times  what  in  prac- 
tical life  amounts  to  unlimited  polygamy,  legalized  lust 
to  suit  the  taste  and  wealth  of  all.  The  late  Shah,  I 
was  told  by  a  Persian  officer  in  Teheran,  left  in  his 
harem  when  he  died  1400  women,  104  of  whom  were 
recognized  as  legal  wives,  the  rest  as  concubines  and 
attendants.  The  present  Shah  said  some  years  ago 
that  his  father  had  56  wives.  Few  Persians  are  able 
to  maintain  many  wives.  Probably  one-half,  says  one 
who  has  lived  in  Persia  many  years,  are  monogamists, 
not  of  choice,  but  of  poverty.  For  the  satisfaction 
of  these,  against  their  creation  of  homes,  the  Koran 
provides  in  its  enactments  regarding  divorce.  "  Ye 
may  divorce  your  wives  twice."  "  Then  if  the  hus- 
band divorce  her  a  third  time,  it  is  not  lawful  for  him 
to  take  her  again,  until  she  shall  have  married  another 
husband;  and  if  he  also  divorce  her,  then  shall  no 
blame  attach  to  them  if  they  return  to  each  other." 


3o6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

(Idem,  Sura  ii.,  229,  230,  pp.  395,  396.)  It  is  against 
this  last  provision  that  Al  Kindi,  a  Christian  apologist 
living  at  the  court  of  Al-Mamun,  one  of  the  most 
liberal  of  the  Bagdad  Caliphs,  in  the  ninth  century,  and 
who  seems  to  have  been  allowed  free  speech,  most 
bitterly  protests  in  a  letter  written  to  a  Moslem  friend, 
Abdullah  ibn  Ismail,  who  had  invited  him  to  embrace 
Islam.  "  What  could  be  more  vile,"  he  asks,  "  than  your 
own  ordinance  for  legalizing  remarriage  after  the 
thrice  repeated  divorce ;  for  by  it,  a  chaste  lady,  tender 
and  delicate,  the  mother  of  virtuous  daughters,  herself, 
it  may  be  noble-born  and  held  in  honour  by  her  kinsfolk 
— this  pattern  of  virtue  and  refinement  must  submit 
her  person  to  the  lewd  embrace  of  a  hired  gallant, 
before  she  can  be  restored  to  her  husband, — an  abom- 
inable law,  more  odious  even  than  the  wicked  custom 
of  the  Magians.  And  yet  thou  invitest  me  to  accept 
a  vile  ordinance  like  this — an  ordinance  against  which 
the  very  beasts  of  the  field,  if  you  gave  them  speech, 
would  cry  out  for  shame !  "  "  Words  strong,  but  not 
too  strong  here,"  adds  Sir  William  Muir.  (Muir's 
Al  Kindi,  London  ed.,  1887,  pp.  93,  94.)  This 
was  evidently  the  way  the  law  worked.  No  limit  was 
set  to  the  number  of  wives  a  man  might  take  in  suc- 
cession and  put  away  by  simply  thrice  declaring  them 
divorced,  and  observing  certain  financial  provisions. 
The  wife  has  no  remedy,  no  recourse.  She  must  do 
what  she  can  with  her  life.  Under  such  practices  it 
is  no  wonder  that  one  sees  in  the  main  not  the 
attractive  women,  (veiled  women  are  the  minority  in 
Persia  as  a  whole)  and  the  handsome,  stalwart, 
active  men  of  whom  we  read  in  books  on  Persia,  but 
wrecked  and  weakly  men  and  women,  aged  and 
shrivelled  before  their  time. 

I  have  already  suggested  that  it  is  significant  that  the 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    307 

provisions  regarding  divorce  are  from  a  sura  in  the 
Koran  named  "  The  Cow."  That  is  woman's  grade  in 
Moslem  principles.  There  are  exceptions  to  placing  her 
on  this  grade.  Some  of  the  Prophet's  women  were  in 
part  wives  and  the  exception  of  a  nobler  treatment 
emerges  here  and  there  in  the  Koran,  but  as  a  cow 
Islam  has  treated  woman.  It  began  soon  to  degrade 
man.  It  began  at  once  to  degrade  woman,  who 
"  possessed,"  according  to  Muir,  "  more  freedom  and 
exercised  a  healthier  and  more  legitimate  influence, 
under  the  pagan  institutions  of  Arabia  before  the  time 
of  Mohammed,  than  under  the  influence  of  Islam." 
Islam  had  done  its  deadly  work  in  this  regard  in 
Persia.  In  his  report  on  Persia  in  1873,  Dr.  J.  E. 
Polok,  who  was  a  physician,  named  as  the  first  main 
cause  of  the  decline  of  population,  "  the  unfavourable 
position  of  women,  including  the  facility  of  divorce, 
early  marriage,  and  premature  age." 

It  has  been  claimed  for  Islam  that  its  provisions  re- 
garding marriage  have  abolished  the  vice  of  prosti- 
tution, and  made  Moslem  lands  in  this  vital  respect 
cleaner  than  Christian  lands.  The  moral  fruits  of 
Islam  have  been  extolled  in  the  public  places.  It  can 
be  shortly  replied  that  the  authorized  Moslem  prac- 
tices regarding  women  render  prostitution  a  super- 
fluous and  unnecessary  vice,  but  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  accept  the  challenge  and  to  measure  Shiah  Moham- 
medanism by  it.  Prostitution  has  not  been  abolished. 
It  flourishes  in  Meshed  under  ecclesiastical  sanction, 
and  in  the  cities.  Meshed  is  one  of  the  holy  cities  of 
Persia,  the  burial  place  of  the  preeminently  holy  Imam 
Reza,  the  son  of  Imam  Musa  and  the  eighth  of  the 
twelve  Imams  or  Prophets,  to  which  100,000  pilgrims 
annually  make  their  way  from  all  parts  of  Persia.  "  In 
recognition  of  the   long   journeys   which   they  have 


3o8        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

made,"  says  Curzon,  "  of  the  hardships  which  they 
have  sustained,  and  of  the  distance  by  which  they  are 
severed  from  family  and  home,  they  are  permitted, 
with  the  connivance  of  the  ecclesiastical  law  and  its 
officers,  to  contract  temporary  marriages  during  their 
sojourn  in  the  city.  There  is  a  large  permanent  popu- 
lation of  wives  suitable  for  the  purpose.  (A  sigheh  or 
temporary  wife  may  be  married  for  any  period  from 
one  day  to  ninety-nine  years.  Women  often  prefer 
being  sighchs  for  the  full  period  to  being  akdis  or  real 
wives.  The  akdi  can  be  divorced  at  any  time,  the 
sigheh  not  before  the  end  of  her  contract,  except  for 
misconduct.  Short  period  sighchs  in  the  big  cities 
are  quasi-prostitutes.)  A  mollah  is  found,  under 
whose  sanction  a  contract  is  drawn  up  and  formally 
sealed  by  both  parties,  a  fee  paid,  and  the  union  is 
legally  accomplished ;  after  the  lapse  of  a  fortnight  or 
a  month,  or  whatever  be  the  specified  period,  the  con- 
tract terminates,  the  temporary  husband  returns  to  his 
own  lares  et  penatcs  in  some  distant  clime,  and  the 
lady  after  an  enforced  celibacy  of  fourteen  days  dura- 
tion, resumes  her  career  of  persevering  matrimony. 
In  other  words,  a  gigantic  system  of  prostitution,  un- 
der the  sanction  of  the  Church,  prevails  in  Meshed. 
There  is  probably  not  a  more  immoral  city  in  Asia." 
(Curzon's  Persia,  London  cd.,  1892,  vol.  I.,  p. 
165).  Malcolm  says  the  Sunnis  abhor  the  practice. 
(History  of  Persia,  London  ed.,  1892,  vol.  II,  p. 
428.)  There  are  villages  also,  such  as  Novaron  in 
the  province  of  Irak-Ajemi,  which  are  noted  for  the 
presence  of  soliciting  women  even  on  the  roads  about 
the  town.  While  it  has  prostituted  the  home  and 
made  it  a  private  brothel,  Islam  has  not  purged  so- 
ciety of  the  hideous  vice  which  is  the  curse  of  civili- 
zation, and  of  the  celibate  life  which  civilization  fos- 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    309 

ters.  It  is  true  that  Mohammed,  with  that  one-sided 
vision  which  has  characterized  all  legislation  on  this 
subject,  pronounced  fearful  penalties  upon  the  woman 
proved  guilty  of  whoredom.  She  was  to  be  immured, 
as  men  are  still,  vmtil  she  died.  (Sale  s  Koran, 
ed.,  1887,  sura  19,  p.  55.)  This  punishment  was 
changed  by  the  Sunna  to  scourging  with  a  hundred 
stripes  and  banishment  for  a  year  in  the  case  of 
maidens,  and  to  stoning  for  married  women.  (Vid. 
Sura  xxiv,  2.)  Within  recent  years,  prostitutes  have 
been  sewed  in  bags,  laid  on  the  ground,  and  beaten 
to  death  with  clubs  in  Urumia,  by  the  civil  of- 
ficials; but  such  punishment  is  exceptional  and  it  is 
not  visited  upon  the  Meshed  iniquity,  nor  have  I  heard 
of  any  punishment  of  such  offences  elsewhere.  Shiah 
Mohammedanism,  if  it  does  not  openly  sanction  im- 
morality, tolerates  it  in  its  holy  places  in  the  very  pre- 
cincts of  its  mosques,  and  furnishes  no  justification  of 
the  panegyrics,  with  which  we  have  been  made 
familiar. 

There  is  a  hideous  form  of  immorality,  moreover, 
which  Mohammedanism  seems  to  have  revived,  and 
which  flourishes  under  Islam  as  it  does  nowhere  else 
in  a  world  richly  furnished  everywhere  with  ingenious 
forms  of  evil,  the  sin  of  Sodomy.  Dr.  H.  H.  Jessup 
writes : 

"  In  the  city  of  Hamah,  in  Northern  Syria,  the 
Christian  population  even  to  this  day  are  afraid  to 
allow  their  boys  from  ten  to  fourteen  years  of  age  to 
appear  in  the  streets  after  sunset,  lest  they  be  carried 
off  by  the  Moslems  as  victims  of  the  horrible  practice 
of  sodomy.  Mohammedan  pashas  surround  them- 
selves with  fair-faced  boys,  nominally  as  scribes  and 
pages,  when  in  reality  their  object  is  of  entirely  an- 


jio       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

other  character.  A  young  EngHsh  lord,  travelling  in 
Syria  some  years  since,  entered  the  Turkish  baths  in 
the  city  of  Tripoli,  when  he  was  set  upon  by  a  number 
of  Moslems,  as  the  men  of  Sodom  attempted  to  assail 
the  angelic  guests  of  the  righteous  Lot,  and  only  with 
the  greatest  difficulty  did  he  escape  from  their  brutal 
hands.  They  were  arrested,  bastinadoed  and  sent  to 
the  Acre  penitentiary.  A  crime  so  abominable,  un- 
speakable, and  incredible,  instead  of  being  checked  by 
Mohammedanism,  is  fostered  by  it,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
scourges  of  Mohammedan  society."  (Jessup's  AIo- 
hammcdan  Missionary  Problem,  pp.  48,  49.) 

Among  the  "  higher  classes,"  this  crime  is  horribly 
common  in  Persia  to-day.  Scores  of  the  khans  and 
wealthier  men  of  the  cities  keep  boys  for  the  foulest 
purposes.  The  sin  was  prevalent  in  Henry  Martyn's 
day.  He  writes  in  his  journal  for  May  28,  181 1, 
"  The  Resident  (at  Bushire)  gave  us  some  account 
this  evening  of  the  moral  state  of  Persia.  It  is  enough 
to  make  one  shudder.  If  God  rained  down  fire  upon 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  how  is  it  that  this  nation  is  not 
blotted  out  from  under  heaven  ?  I  do  not  remember 
to  have  heard  such  things  of  the  Hindus,  except  the 
Sikhs ;  they  seen  to  rival  the  Mohammedans."  After 
quoting  Dr.  Jessup's  story  of  the  condition  of  Hamah, 
Dr.  Wherry  adds: 

"  In  India  the  case  may  not  be  as  bad  as  it  is  in 
Turkey,  but  I  think  we  can  fairly  agree  with  the  Rev. 
J.  Vaughan,  who  says,  '  However  the  phenomenon 
may  be  accounted  for.  we,  after  mixing  with  Hindus 
and  Mussulmans  for  nineteen  years  back,  have  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying  that  the  latter  are,  as  a  whole,  some 
degrees  lower  in  the  social  and  moral  scale  than  the 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    311 

former.' "       (Wherry's    Commentary   on   the   Koran, 
London,  ed.,  1884,  vol.  II,  p.  69.) 

Against  this  sin  the  Koran  says  only  this,  and  some 
dispute  its  reference  to  sodomy :  "  And  if  two  men 
among  you  commit  the  crime,  then  punish  them  both ; 
but  if  they  repent  and  amend,  then  let  them  be ;  Verily, 
God  is  He  who  relenteth,  merciful"  (Sura  iv,  20). 
The  Prophet  was  not  understood  to  intend  any  heavy 
punishment.  Some  understood  that  they  were  only  to 
reproach  the  offenders  in  public,  or  strike  them  on  the 
head  with  their  slippers.  Some  others  thought  the 
guilty  persons  might  be  scourged.  (Sale's  Koran, 
p.  55.)  According  to  the  Tafsir-i-Raiiii  the  punish- 
ment was  to  be  inflicted  by  the  tongue,  at  most  by  the 
hand.  (Wherry's  Commentary,  vol.  II,  p.  75.) 
Shiah  Mohammedanism  has  not  saved  woman  from 
man.  In  multitudes  of  instances  it  has  not  saved  man 
from  his  brother. 

What  the  morals  of  the  ancient  Persians  were,  we 
do  not  know.  As  Sir  John  Malcolm  justly  observed, 
"  The  historians  of  that  nation  never  write  of  common 
men;  and  it  is,  perhaps,  unfair  to  judge  of  the  mass 
by  what  we  find  recorded  of  their  kings  and  heroes. 
If  we  should,  the  sentence  would  not  be  favourable.  .  .  . 
If  their  example  was  generally  followed,  the  morals  of 
the  Persians  cannot  have  been  much  better  than  their 
government  and  laws."  (Malcolm's  History  of 
Persia,  London  ed.,  1829,  vol.  I,  p.  554.)  The  tra- 
ditional view  is  that  "  the  Persian  was  keen-witted  and 
ingenious,  generous,  warm-hearted,  hospitable,  and 
courageous.  He  was  bold  and  dashing  in  war ;  spark- 
ling, vivacious,  and  quick  in  repartee  in  social  life.  .  .  . 
He  was  self-indulgent  and  luxurious,  but  chary  of 
debt.     The  early  Persians  were  remarkable  for  truth- 


312        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

fulness,  lying  being  abhorred  as  the  sjiecial  character- 
istic of  the  evil  spirit."  (Barnes'  General  History, 
p.  97.)  At  the  time  of  the  Moslem  conquest,  the  Per- 
sians were  scarcely  "  courageous,  bold,  and  dashing  i-n 
war,"  though  self-indulgence  and  luxury  were  con- 
spicuous. Al  Kindi  quotes  as  referring  to  the  deli- 
cacies of  the  Persians,  the  words  of  Khaled,  the  Ara- 
bian general,  after  the  battle  of  Walaja  in  633,  "  By 
the  Lord !  even  if  there  were  no  Faith  to  fight  for,  it 
were  worth  our  while  to  fight  for  these."  (Muir's 
Caliphate,  London,  ed.,  1892,  pp.  52  f.)  The  com- 
mon people  were  then,  as  now,  probably  weary  bigots 
and  subjects,  drearily  content  with  that  which  they 
must  of  necessity  endure.  In  any  event,  what  single 
objectionable  trait  of  the  old  Persians  has  Mohammed- 
anism eradicated? 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  for  Islam  that  it  abol- 
ished intemperance  and  the  use  of  wine.  This 
is  indeed  the  doctrine  of  the  Koran.  "  They  will 
ask  thee  concerning  wine  and  lots :  Answer,  in  both 
there  is  great  sin  and  also  some  things  of  use  unto 
men ;  but  their  sinfulness  is  greater  than  their  use." 
(Sura  ii,  216.)  "O  true  believers,  surely  wine,  and 
lots,  and  images,  and  divining  arrows  are  an  abomina- 
tion of  the  work  of  Satan ;  therefore  avoid  them  that 
ye  may  prosper."  (Sura  v.  92.)  And  yet  some 
Moslems  do  not  understand  that  the  Koran  forbids 
wine.  They  read  Sura,  xvi,  69,  "  And  among  fruits 
ye  have  the  palm  and  the  vine,  from  which  ye  get  wine 
and  healthful  nutriment,"  and  understand  with  our 
"  moderate  drinkers,"  that  only  excess  is  forbidden. 
Islam,  however,  has  undoubtedly  discouraged  the  use 
of  wine.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  it  can  long 
continue  to  do  so.  Drunkenness  has  become  a  not 
uncommon  vice,  with  its  accompanying  physical  results 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    313 

on  wives  and  sisters.  There  are  wine  shops  in  Ham- 
adan,  patronized  openly  by  Moslems.  Drunkards 
stumble  along  the  streets.  The  official  class  largely 
uses  wine.  At  a  dinner  given  recently  in  Teheran  by 
a  prominent  Persian,  a  toast  in  honour  of  some  member 
of  the  royal  family  was  drunk  by  every  Persian  in 
wine.  A  Moslem  driver  with  whom  I  left  Teheran, 
had  two  whiskey  bottles  from  which  he  took  uncon- 
cealed and  frequent  drinks.  "  Civilization,"  it  must 
be  admitted,  has  set  the  fashion  for  the  "  higher 
classes,"  while  members  of  the  Gregorian  Church 
are  the  wine-sellers  in  many  places.  Let  us  accept 
our  shame.  Let  Islam  confess  its  failures.  It  has 
been  unable  to  wait  for  the  heaven  which  Mohammed 
described,  "  A  picture  of  the  Paradise  which  is 
promised  to  the  God-fearing!  Therein  are  rivers  of 
water  which  corrupt  not ;  and  rivers  of  milk  whose 
taste  changeth  not ;  and  rivers  of  wine  delicious  to 
those  who  quafif  it."      (Sura  xlvii,   16.) 

One  virtue  which  the  ancient  Persians  are  reputed 
to  have  possessed  the  modern  Persians  notably  lack. 
They  are  notorious  liars.  Falsehood  has  sunk  deep 
into  the  national  character  as  one  of  its  most  prominent 
features.  In  high  life  and  low,  in  relations  with  of- 
ficials and  in  common  intercourse  on  the  highway,  the 
Persian  seems  as  ready  to  lie  as  to  tell  the  truth,  some 
say  more  ready.  "  The  word  of  an  Englishman," 
"  the  word  of  a  Christian,"  are  expressions  used  among 
Moslems  as  guarantees  of  reliability  not  to  be  found  in 
"  the  word  of  a  Mussulman."  Whether  the  Persians 
of  to-day  are  greater  liars  than  the  Persians  of  the 
seventh  century  cannot  be  said,  but  Shiah  Moham- 
medanism has  not  discouraged  the  vice  or  gfiven  the 
people  that  robust  love  of  truth  which  is  a  fruit  of 
Christianity.     The  deceit  and  hypocrisy  of  the  mol- 


314       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

lahs  are  sufficient  nowadays  to  school  the  whole  people 
into  a  contempt  for  absolute  truthfulness,  from  which 
it  will  take  generations  to  rescue  them,  when  Islam 
withdraws  before  the  Cross. 

Islam  is  not  contending  at  all  against  the  spread  of 
the  opium  habit.  While  not  responsible  for  it — the 
native  doctors  probably  have  to  bear  that  responsibility 
— it  wages  no  such  war  on  it  as  the  Christian  Church 
wages  on  intemperance  and  opium.  The  habit  has 
spread  like  wild-fire,  and  medical  missionaries,  who  see 
the  inside  of  Persian  life,  declare  that  the  habit  is  as 
common  as  it  is  in  China.  This  curse  and  the  lust  au- 
thorized by  the  Koran,  are  visibly  eating  out  the  life  of 
Persia.  Her  manhood  is  rotting  away.  The  mollahs 
raise  no  voice  of  protest. 

In  the  absence  of  home-life  and  in  the  midst  of  a 
general  weakening  of  morals,  the  place  of  the  child  in 
Persia  may  be  imagined.  There  are  families  where 
there  is  mutual  love,  no  doubt,  and  w^here  the  child 
is  loved,  and,  after  a  fashion,  trained,  but  these  are 
rare.  The  child,  as  a  rule,  grows  up  as  it  can,  and 
then  is  tossed  into  life  equipped  only  to  hasten  the 
decadence,  not  the  progress  of  the  nation.  The  fre- 
quency of  divorce,  the  animal  conception  of  marriage, 
depreciates  the  value  of  the  tie  between  parent  and 
child.  One  of  the  mission  schools  for  girls  is  made 
up  largely  of  children  of  whom  their  parents  wish  to 
be  rid,  or  whose  mothers,  having  married  again,  are 
charged  by  their  new  husbands  to  dispose  of  the  en- 
cumbrances of  the  previous  marriage.  In  Sareh,  at 
the  chappar  khanch,  or  post  house,  we  saw  a  poor 
blind  boy,  shivering  in  the  winter  wind,  in  a  mere  rag 
of  a  shirt  as  his  only  garment,  kicked  about  like  a 
dog,  and  turned  out  into  the  village  streets  to  beg,  be- 
cause as  the  fruit  of  a  previous  marriage  he  had  no 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    315 

real  place  in  the  windowless  den,  into  which  his  mothei 
had  married  as  a  refuge  from  her  last  divorce.  There 
will  be  mother-love  wherever  there  are  mothers,  but 
Shiah  Mohammedanism  does  nothing  to  save  it  from 
extinction. 

With  a  moral  result  so  unsatisfactory,  it  is  scarcely 
worth  while  to  ask  what  the  technical  religious  fruits 
of  Shiah  Mohammedanism  have  been.  It  would  be 
unjust  not  to  observe,  however,  what  sort  of  a  priest- 
hood it  has  developed.  The  mollahs  are  Mohammed- 
anism in  Persia.  They  are  both  its  fruit  and  its  root. 
In  his  nineteen  years  of  wide  experience  in  Persia,  Dr. 
George  W.  Holmes,  thinks  he  has  met  one  mollah 
who  was  sincere,  though  a  very  ignorant  man.  There 
are  doubtless  not  a  few  others,  but  the  ecclesiastical 
class  of  Shiahism  cannot  be  surpassed  for  fanaticism, 
bigotry,  hypocrisy,  and  ignorance  of  the  world  and 
history  by  the  priests  of  any  other  non-savage  faith. 
Curzon  maintains  that  Conolly  was  well  within  the 
mark  when  he  wrote  of  the  mollahs  of  one  of  Shiah- 
ism's  most  holy  shrines,  "  The  greater  number  of  these 
are  rogues,  who  only  take  thought  how  to  make  the 
most  of  the  pilgrims  that  visit  the  shrine.  From  the 
high  priest  to  the  seller  of  bread,  all  have  the  same 
end ;  and,  not  content  with  the  stranger's  money,  those 
in  office  about  the  saint  appropriate  to  themselves  the 
very  dues  for  keeping  his  temple  in  order."  (Cur- 
zon's  Persia,  vol.  I,  p.  163.) 

Islam,  as  a  religion,  apart  from  its  ethics,  has  proved 
in  Persia  to  be  what  it  has  elsewhere  shown  itself,  a 
religion  of  doctrine  and  form,  and  not  of  life.  It  does 
not  provide  for  fellowship  with  God.  He  spoke  by 
Mohammed,  and  was  still.  The  Koran  is  the  last 
sound  of  His  voice  human  ears  have  heard.  Of  a 
living  God  speaking  to  the  soul  and  dwelling  there  as 


3i6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  light  of  our  light  and  the  life  of  our  Hfe,  it  does 
not  dream.  He,  the  Eternal  One,  sits  on  His  throne 
and  watches  His  mighty,  fatalistic  machinery  roll  out 
the  uncliangeably  i)redestine(l  result.  He  speaks  not. 
According  to  the  real  life  of  Islam,  neither  does  He 
hear.  The  deaf  and  dumb  God  drives  the  engines  of 
fate.  "  Inshallah,"  "  Kismet,"  "  What  am  I  ?  "  The 
Koran  that  has  branded  woman  as  an  animal,  has  re- 
sulted in  doing  the  same  with  man.  The  inadequacy 
of  Islam's  conception  of  fellowship  with  God  is 
shown  with  sufficient  clearness  in  the  Koran's  prescrip- 
tions regarding  prayer.  "  Observe  prayer  at  sunset, 
till  the  first  darkening  of  the  night,  and  the  daybreak 
reading ;  truly  the  daybreak  reading  hath  its  witnesses ; 
and  watch  unto  it  in  a  portion  of  the  night :  this  shall 
be  an  excess  in  the  service  "  (i.  c,  a  work  of  superer- 
ogation). (Sura  xvii.,  8i,  82.)  "Observe  prayer  at 
each  morning,  at  the  close  of  the  day,  and  at  the  ap- 
proach of  night — verily  good  deeds  drive  away  evil 
deeds."  (Sura  xi.,  116.)  "Recite  the  portions  of 
the  Book  which  have  been  revealed  to  thee  and  dis- 
charge the  duty  of  prayer :  verily  prayer  restraineth 
from  the  filthy  and  blameworthy."  (Sura  xxix.,  44.) 
"  Think  within  thine  own  self  on  God,  with  lowliness 
and  with  fear,  and  without  loud- spoken  words,  at  even 
and  at  mom."  (Sura  Ixxxvii.,  204.)  "Turn  then 
(in  prayer)  thy  face  towards  the  Sacred  Mosque  (of 
Mecca),  and  wherever  ye  be,  turn  your  faces  in  that 
direction."  "  Seek  help  through  patience  and  prayer : 
verily  God  is  with  the  patient."  (Sura  ii.,  138,  148.) 
"  O  ye  true  believers,  come  not  to  prayer  when 
drunken,  but  wait  till  you  can  understand  what  ye 
utter."  (Sura  iv.,  46.)  "When  ye  have  ended  the 
prayer  (during  war  or  battle),  make  mention  of  God, 
standing,  and  sitting,  and  reclining  on  your  sides ;  and 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    317 

as  soon  as  you  are  secure,  observe  prayer:  verily,  to 
the  faithful,  prayer  is  a  prescribed  duty,  and  for  stated 
hours."  (Sura  iv.,  104.)  "  O  believers!  when  ye  ad- 
dress yourselves  to  prayer,  then  wash  your  faces,  and 
your  hands  up  to  the  elbow,  and  wipe  your  heads  and 
your  feet  to  the  ankles."  (Sura  cxiv.,  8.)  Perhaps 
half  of  the  Mussulmans  of  Persia  respond  to  the  Muez- 
zin's call,  but  to  these  and  the  other  half  who  are  un- 
able to  pray  or  undesirous,  religion  is  a  matter  not  of 
life,  fellowship,  and  progress  in  God,  but  of  assent  to 
a  dead  man's  message,  delivered  twelve  centuries  ago, 
of  compliance  with  a  few  ritualized  forms,  and  of  a 
kind  of  cheerful  and  dependent  assent  to  the  drearily 
irresistible  decrees  of  the  Divine  Fate,  "  the  Compas- 
sionate, the  Merciful." 

The  picture  must  not  be  left  wholly  unrelieved, 
however.  Islam  taught,  and  would  teach  now,  if  men 
could  hear,  a  mighty  truth.  As  Carlyle  says :  "  Islam 
means  that  we  must  submit  to  God,  that  our  whole 
strength  lies  in  resigned  submission  to  Him,  whatso- 
ever He  do  to  us.  ...  It  has  ever  been  held  the 
highest  wisdom  for  a  man  not  only  to  submit  to  neces- 
sity— necessity  will  make  him  submit — but  to  know  and 
believe  well  that  the  stern  thing  which  necessity  had 
ordered,  was  the  wisest,  the  best,  the  thing  wanted 
there;  to  cease  his  frantic  pretension  of  scanning  this 
great  God's  world  in  his  small  fraction  of  a  brain ;  to 
know  that  it  had  verily,  though  deep  beyond  his  sound- 
ings, a  just  law,  that  the  soul  of  it  was  good ;  that  his 
part  in  it  was  to  conform  to  the  law  of  the  whole,  and 
in  devout  silence  follow  that ;  not  questioning  it,  obey- 
ing it  as  unquestionable."  (Carlyle's  Heroes  and 
Hero  Worship,  chap,  ii.)  This  is  part  of  the  truth 
about  our  relation  to  God,  but  it  is  truth,  truth,  how- 
ever, which  the  Shiah  mollahs,  not  knowing  God,  can- 


3i8        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

not  teach,  and  the  Shiah  Miissidmans,  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  whom  are  unable  to  read,  can  not  learn  from 
the  Koran  for  themselves.  Persian  Moslems  have 
learned  just  enough  of  the  truth  to  make  them  prompt 
to  lay  the  responsibility  of  their  own  shortcomings  and 
transgressions  on  God.  "  It  was  fate,"  they  say.  The 
name  of  God  is  constantly  on  their  lips.  "  Allah  "  is 
one  of  the  most  frequently  spoken  words  in  Persia, 
the  "  Allah  "  of  the  great  machine.  This  conception 
of  God,  limited  by  their  range,  has  bred  a  sort  of  con- 
tentment under  the  hard  and  oppressive  conditions  of 
their  life.  "  It  is  God's  will.  It  could  not  be  other- 
wise." And  so  they  endure  what  we,  who  believe  that 
nothing  is  God's  will  that  is  not  right  and  true,  would 
reform  or  overthrow.  This  contentment,  which  a 
light  disposition  colours  with  humour  and  even  cheer- 
fulness, covers  up  much  of  what  is  darkest  in  the 
people's  life,  and  deceives  the  hurried  glance.  Under 
it,  however,  is  the  cancer  of  a  dead  religion  and  a 
rotten  national  life.  I  have  been  writing,  of  course, 
of  the  Persians,  and  not  of  the  Turks  in  Persia,  who 
are  a  virile  people,  though  much  of  what  I  have  written 
would  apply  to  them,  nor  of  the  Gregorians  and  Nes- 
torians,  who  have  had  a  large  measure  of  the  truth. 

The  Koran,  also,  can  not  be  condemned  in  a  breath. 
There  is  very  much  in  it  that  is  objectionable,  hor- 
rible, but  it  can  be,  also,  a  really  helpful  book  to  the 
Christian.  Much  of  Thomas  a  Kcmpis  is  anticipated 
here,  and  amid  its  constant  call  to  war  is  heard  the 
quiet  call  to  the  soul  to  rest  itself  in  God  ;  but  the  Shialr 
Mussulman  does  not  know  the  Koran.  He  cannot  read 
it,  and  his  mollahs  do  not  lead  him  by  its  call  into  that 
life  of  quietness  and  confidence,  wherein  is  strength. 
They  stop,  as  he  must,  with  a  fatalistic,  contented  en- 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    319 

durance  of  what  is,  as  the  divine  will,  to  be  accepted, 
never  to  have  its  divine  credentials  scrutinized. 

It  is  fortunate  for  both  Church  and  State  that  this  is 
the  Persian  attitude  of  mind.  Otherwise  the  lifetime 
of  their  corruptions  and  abuses  would  be  short,  but 
of  the  decadence  of  the  State  I  shall  not  speak  here. 
In  its  system  of  village  government  and  administra- 
tion, a  vital  question  in  these  Oriental  lands,  which  are 
made  up  not  of  cities  or  of  farm-houses,  but  of  vil- 
lages, in  its  civil  service,  in  its  conduct  of  general  in- 
ternal affairs,  in  its  moral  atmosphere,  the  Kingdom  of 
Persia  is  moving  with  rapid  steps  the  way  of  the 
suicide.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  talked  fifteen  minutes 
with  any  Persian  who  did  not  himself  introduce  this 
subject,  and  hope  for  the  absorption  of  his  country 
by  Russia  or  England,  or  its  division  between  them. 
Of  all  the  past  glory  of  the  nation  almost  nothing  is 
left — barring  a  few  piles  of  stone  ruins — save  two 
great  wrecks,  a  wrecked  government  and  a  wrecked 
people. 

Shiah  Mohammedanism  is  not  responsible  for  all 
this.  Other  agencies  have  been  at  work.  The  process 
of  decay  had  set  in  before  on  the  plain  of  Nehavend, 
just  over  the  lofty  peaks  of  El  vend,  Nowan  over- 
threw Firuzon,  and  subjected  Persia  to  the  dominance 
of  Islam.  But  a  religion  is  to  be  judged  not  only  by 
its  ability  to  foster  life,  where  life  exists,  but  also  by 
its  ability  to  arrest  decay.  A  faith  must  lift  the  fallen. 
It  must  also  prevent  the  upright  from  falling.  And 
this  Islam  has  not  done.  Its  Arabian  followers  dom- 
inated Persia.  They  also  doomed  it,  for,  instead  of 
being  able  to  arrest  decay  in  a  civilized  or  semi-civi- 
lized people,  Islam  itself  contains  the  seeds  of  decay. 
Rodwell  states  the  case  mildly,  as  each  passing  year 


320       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

shows,  when  he  says,  "  There  arc  elements  in  it  on 
which  mighty  nations,  and  conquering — though  not, 
perhaps,  durable — empires  can  be  built  up :  for  it  must 
be  admitted  that  no  Moslem  State  appears  to  have  had 
in  it  the  progressive  life  which  Christianity,  in  addition 
to  its  diviner  gifts,  has  imparted  to  the  western  na- 
tions." (Rodwell's  Koran,  preface,  p.  xxiii.)  Why 
it  should  be  so,  Hobart  unhesitatingly  points  out. 
"  An  evil  code  of  ethics,  enjoined  by  the  national  faith, 
and  accepted,  by  its  appeal  to  a  divine  origin,  as  the 
final  and  irrevocable  standard  of  morality,  presents  an 
insuperable  barrier  to  the  regeneration  and  progress 
of  a  nation.  (Hobart's  Islam  and  Its  Founder,  p. 
229.)  All  intelligent  Persians  acknowledge  the  down- 
ward movement. 

The  late  Shah  veneered  the  land  with  a  few  civilized 
garnishments,  the  telegraph,  the  post,  a  few  roads, 
but  most  of  the  importations  with  which  he  sought  to 
adorn  the  inevitable  decadence  of  his  country,  have 
themselves  shared  in  the  general  movement.  A  Per- 
sian general  in  Irak-Ajemi  expressed  it,  when  he  said 
that  things  had  been  bad,  that  they  were  very  bad 
now,  and  that  they  would  grow  worse  and  worse.  It 
has  been  so  ever.  It  will  ever  be  so.  Islam  has  lifted 
savages.     It  has  slain,  like  a  savage,  all  civilization. 

In  the  great  work  which  will  open  upon  the  coming 
wreck  of  the  Persian  and  Ottoman  empires,  the  Nes- 
torians,  and  Armenians,  and  Jews,  among  whom  the 
missionary  work  now  finds  its  field  are  to  play  an  im- 
portant part.  However  far  the  Oriental  Christian 
Churches  may  have  wandered  from  the  truth,  their 
superior  honesty,  and  truthfulness,  and  better  morals 
have  commanded  in  Persia,  at  least,  some  measure  of 
respect  from  the  Aloslems.  Undoubtedly  they  do  treat 
these  "  Christians "  with  contempt,    and    look    down 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism    321 

often  on  their  ancient  Churches  "  with  compassion  and 
disdain,"  and  Sir  William  Muir's  opinion  is  as  dis- 
cerning- and  judicious  as  usual,  when  he  declares,  "  In 
establishing  an  Eastern  Propaganda,  for  which  the 
path  is  now  being  thrown  so  marvellously  open,  it 
would  be  a  fatal  mistake  to  attempt  the  work  hand  in 
hand  with  the  unreformed  Churches.  The  contempt  of 
centuries  would  attach  to  it.  The  attempt,  so  far  as  it 
concerns  its  influence  on  the  Moslem  world,  is  doomed 
to  failure."  (Muir's  Szvccf  First  Fruits,  London 
ed.,  preface,  xvii.)  Only  the  clean,  strong  spirit  of 
evangelical  Christianity  can  do  the  work  that  is  to  be 
done,  and  this  spirit  ever  increasing  numbers  of  the 
members  of  the  old  Churches  are  receiving  from  the 
missionaries  from  the  West,  and  as  they  receive  it, 
they  are  becoming  the  best  and  at  present  the  only 
tolerated  evangelists  to  the  Moslems.  Yet,  in  our  just 
judgment  upon  the. Oriental  Churches  for  their  great 
sloth,  for  their  treason  to  the  pure  faith,  for  their 
responsibility  in  part  for  the  rise  and  spread  of  Islam, 
we  need  charitably  to  remember  the  pressure  to  which 
these  Churches  have  been  subjected,  and  against  which 
they  have  boldly  maintained  for  twelve  centuries  the 
name  of  Christian.  For  these  centuries  the  so-called 
Code  of  Omar  illustrates  the  attitude  of  the  dominant 
faith  toward  the  members  of  Christian  communities : 
"  The  dress  of  both  sexes  and  their  slaves  must  be 
distinguished  by  stripes  of  yellow ;  forbidden  to  ap- 
pear on  horseback,  if  they  rode  on  mule  or  ass,  the 
stirrups  and  knobs  of  the  saddle  must  be  of  wood ; 
their  graves  level  with  the  ground,  and  the  mark  of 
the  devil  on  the  lintel  of  their  doors  ;.the  children  pro- 
hibited from  being  taught  by  Moslem  masters,  and 
the  race,  however  able  or  well  qualified,  proscribed 
from  aspiring  to  any  office  of  emolument  or  trust ;  be- 


322       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sides  the  existing  churches,  spared  at  the  conquest,  no 
new  buildings  to  be  erected  for  the  purposes  of  wor- 
ship; free  entry  into  all  the  holy  places  allowed  at 
pleasure  to  any  Moslem;  no  cross  to  remain  outside, 
nor  any  church-bell  rung."  (Muir's  Caliphate,  p. 
147.)  These  disabilities  were  a  gradual  growth,  and 
their  asperity  has  been  somewhat  softened,  as  some  of 
them  destroyed  themselves,  but  the  bitter,  tyrannical, 
exclusive  spirit  of  them  has  ever  been  the  spirit  of 
Islam  toward  the  Oriental  Christians.  Weak  and  cor- 
rupt these  Churches  arc,  as  needy  almost  of  the  pure 
gospel  as  the  surrounding  iMussulmans,  but  that  they 
have  maintained  their  existence  under  Sunni  and 
Shiah,  and  almost  every  form  of  oppression,  demands 
our  admiration  and  respect. 

How  far  distant  is  the  day  when  the  free  evangeliza- 
tion of  the  Shiah  Mohammedans  may  begin,  no  one 
can  tell.  There  are  many  who  believe  that  a  British 
and  Russian  protectorate  or  a  British  and  Russian 
division  of  the  country  cannot  be  far  distant.  The 
finances  and  the  internal  administration  of  the  country 
alike,  are  in  a  condition  ominously  foreboding  some 
necessary  change.  Meanwhile  there  was  under  Nasr- 
i-din,  and  there  is  under  Muzafr-i-din  a  degree  of 
religious  toleration,  which  would  be  wholly  surprising 
and  illogical,  if  it  were  not,  as  has  been  shown,  that  the 
Persian  State  is  not  the  Moslem  Church.  The  late 
Shah  maintained,  from  the  beginning  of  his  reign,  a 
struggle  with  the  mollahs,  in  which  his  aim  was  to 
strengthen  the  State  at  the  expense  of  the  ecclesiastics. 
This  struggle,  togctlicr  with  his  visits  to  Europe,  and 
his  natural  disposition,  inclined  him  toward  a  measure 
of  toleration  denied  to  the  missionaries  in  Turkey. 
What  Freeman  says  is  true,  that  "  no  Mohammedan 
ruler  has  really  put  his  subjects  of  other  religions  on 


Mohammedans  and  Mohammedanism     323 

the  same  footing  as  his  Mohammedan  subjects.  He 
must  treat  them  as  the  inferiors  of  his  Mohammedan 
subjects,  as  men  whose  reUgion  is  tolerated,  and  no 
more."  Freeman's  The  Turk  in  Europe,  p.  25). 
The  Shah  has  made  no  pretensions  to  granting  reHg- 
ious  Hberty  and  equaHty,  but  he  has  tolerated  and  even 
commended  the  missionary  work,  and  has  not  barred 
the  way  of  Moslems  desiring  to  hear  the  gospel. 
The  principles  and  prejudices  of  the  Shiah,  make 
him  less  kindly  disposed  to  unbelievers.  Christians 
and  Jews,  than  the  Sunni,  but  though  often  threat- 
ened and  made  to  fear,  the  missionaries  have  dwelt  in 
peace,  and  number  among  their  friends  both  mollahs 
and  sayids  of  a  religion,  whose  Bible  enjoins,  "  Fight 
thou  against  them  (Jews  and  Christians) 
until  they  pay  tribute  by  right  of  subjection  and  they 
be  reduced  low."  (Sura  ix.  30.)  And  so  in  a  place 
made  by  God's  hands  they  wait,  and  back  of  them 
the  Church  waits,  until  "  the  day  dawn  and  the  shad- 
ows flee  away,"  and  Shiah  Mohammedanism  may  be 
brought  face  to  face  with  Christ. 


XXV 

GLIMPSES  OF  LIFE  ON  A  PERSIAN  HIGHWAY 

THERE  are  two  prevailing  modes  of  travel  in 
Persia,  on  foot  and  astride.  The  former  is 
not  popular.  It  is  amazing-  to  see  what  endur- 
ance the  apparently  indolent  Persian,  who  will 
move  when  he  must,  and  will  work  on  the  same  terms, 
possesses,  and  with  what  untiring^,  unreslinj^  zeal  he 
will  work  in  some  occupations,  such  as  that  of  chava- 
dar,  which  bring  small  remuneration,  involve  great 
risks,  are  full  of  hardships  and  can  force  no  man  to 
choose  them.  The  chavadar  is  the  Persian  freight- 
car  conductor.  He  owns  a  number  of  horses,  and  car- 
ries freight  of  all  sorts,  human  and  inanimate,  to  any 
part  of  Persia  or  over  into  Turkey.  But  no  Persian 
will  walk  when  he  can  ride,  even  though  to  ride  he 
must  heap  himself  above  a  load  borne  by  a  patient, 
staggering  donkey,  one  of  those  animals  which  make 
a  nuitc,  almost  heart-breaking  appeal  for  a  belief  in 
the  immortality  of  brutes.  "  Anything  to  do  my  work, 
to  keep  my  feet  ofT  the  ground,"  is  the  motto  of  the 
Persian  travelling.  Those  who  ride  go  astride,  women 
and  all.  The  camel  drivers  often  ride  with  both  feet 
on  one  side,  and  when  Dr.  A'anncman  accompanied  the 
Shah's  harem  from  Tabriz  to  Teheran,  as  the  only 
man  the  Shah  would  trust,  much  of  his  work 
was  to  patch  up  camel  drivers,  who  had  fallen 
of¥  in  their  sleep.  The  donkey  riders  sometimes  ride 
with  both  legs  dangling  on  one  side  within  a  few 
inches  of  the  ground.  All  this  is  ultra  laziness,  how- 
ever.   The  trousered   women  ride  alone,  or  sit  behind 

324 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  325 

the  men.  The  side-saddle  of  a  foreign  woman  is  a 
source  of  constant  amazement  in  the  country  and  vil- 
lages. "  Why  she  has  no  legs,"  cry  the  people  on  one 
side.  ''Yes,  she  has,"  cry  those  on  the  other,  "they 
are  both  on  this  side  of  her."  And  so  she  rides  along, 
a  Frangee  monstrosity. 

Not  all  Persians  go  a-travelling,  but  all  go  who  can. 
The  four  vital  elements  of  Islam  are  the  prayers,  the 
fasting,  the  sacred  fifth  of  the  income,  and  the  pilgrim- 
ages. A  more  consistent  religion  of  works,  as  the  mat- 
ter has  turned  out  in  practice,  could  scarcely  be  in- 
vented. So  on  pilgrimages  go  all  who  can.  There  are 
many  reasons  for  a  Persian's  remaining  a  settled  part 
of  one  community,  and  for  his  children's  standing  in 
his  place  after  him,  but  the  travelling  instinct  has  been 
cultivated  by  centuries  of  Islamic  influence,  and  the 
highways  are  full  of  life  and  movement,  fuller  than 
such  a  thin  population  would  justify,  were  it  not  for 
the  religious  obligation  that  drives  thousands  to  waste 
in  this  way  what  has  been  painfully  earned  and  is  dire- 
fully  needed  at  home.  The  travellers  bound  for  the 
religious  shrines,  Kerbela,  Meshed,  Kum,  converge 
into  the  great  roads  running  thither,  and  the  student 
of  the  people's  life  sees  it  unbared  here. 

Down  one  of  these  great  highways  from  Tabriz  to 
Hamadan,  we  travelled  one  October.  Next  to  Te- 
heran, Tabriz  is  the  largest  and  most  important  city 
in  Persia.  It  is  the  distributing  point  to  North-western 
and  much  of  Western  Persia  of  the  importations  from 
Europe,  especially  Russia,  which  would  fain  control 
the  trade  from  the  North.  Russian  oil,  candles,  and 
sugar  pour  down  from  the  North  and  practically  mo- 
nopolize the  North-western  Persia  markets  at  least. 
From  the  South  great  caravans  bring  rugs,  tobacco. 


326       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

dates,  honey,  etc.,  and  show  the  traveller  the  name  of 
Bagdad  in  good  Roman  letters  on  the  bales.  Of  all 
these  caravans  on  this  highway  Tabriz  is  the  point 
of  departure  or  destination. 

A  Persian  highway  is  not  a  manufactured  road.  It 
ovi^es  nothing  to  the  hand  of  man.  His  foot  treads  it, 
if  he  is  so  mean  as  to  walk,  but  he  spends  on  it  neither 
an  efiort  nor  a  copper  coin,  and  the  functions  of  na- 
tional and  local  government  in  the  country  do  not  in- 
clude the  construction  or  maintenance  of  either  bridges 
or  roads.  Accordingly  there  are,  in  one  sense,  almost 
no  roads.  The  highways,  untouched  by  wheels,  save 
when  some  Khan  or  civilized  traveller  makes  the  pain- 
ful attempt,  or  on  the  Tehcran-Rcsht  or  Tehcran-Kum 
roads,  are  simply  a  congeries  of  paths,  diminishing  to 
one  in  a  constricted  place,  and  increasing  to  a  score 
or  more  on  a  broad  plain,  where  a  caravan  of  donkeys 
will  move  along  abreast.  No  one  digs  a  ditch.  No  one 
drains  a  bog.  No  one  removes  a  stone.  The  road  was 
unsurveyed,  ungraded,  and  is  uncared  for  save  by  a 
kind  Providence,  who  makes  His  rain  and  frost,  and 
snow  and  wind  to  come  alike  upon  the  just  and  the 
unjust  track. 

The  roads  of  Azerbaijan,  the  North-western  prov- 
ince of  Persia,  of  which  Tabriz  is  the  capital,  have 
been  infested  by  three  kinds  of  thieves;  the  regular 
robbers,  who  have  pluck  to  attack  travellers,  the  au- 
thorized guards,  who  arc  often  ex-robbers,  or  robbers 
who  have  lost  their  pluck,  and  been  appointed  guards, 
so  as  to  have  legal  authority  to  extort  a  small  fee  from 
a  larger  number,  and  the  vampire  customs-house  ras- 
cals. Azerbaijan  is  a  fertile,  populous  country,  and 
there  are  customs-houses  on  all  its  important  roads. 
Baggage  or  freight  is  not  examined,  but  a  small  fee 
is   levied.     Some  one  finds   a   road   much  used   and 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  327 

offers  the  governor  so  much  for  the  privilege  of 
estahlishing  a  customs-house.'"  This  helps  to  line 
the  governor's  purse,  and  so  fulfil  the  purpose 
for  which  he  is  governor  and  paid  for  his  office, 
and  it  fastens  the  leeches  upon  the  roads  to  bleed 
a  little  each  passer-by  who  has  baggage  or  goods. 
No  service  is  rendered  in  return,  either  by  the  leech  or 
the  government.  The  traveller  must  be — or  pay  for — 
his  own  police,  and  make  his  own  roads,  or  be  satis- 
fied with  the  uncorrupted  face  of  nature.  The  people 
do  not  love  the  customs-houses.  Their  ruins  are  to 
be  found  on  many  highways.  Soldiers  returning 
home,  or  marching  by,  love  to  demolish  the  imposi- 
tions, and  not  infrequently  their  exactions  become  so 
great  that  some  angry  popular  demonstration  forces 
the  government  to  interpose  a  check.  Near  Taswich 
we  passed  a  great  building  in  ruins,  thanks  to  the 
momentary  flare  of  a  sense  of  power  and  justice  in  a 
crowd  of  ragged,  discharged  soldiers,  who,  having 
served  a  government  which  takes  and  never  gives,  re- 
turning home  without  pay,  took  vengeance  on  the 
legalized  throttlers  of  travel  and  trade.  On  the  Tabriz 
highway,  which  runs  into  Persian  Kurdist^m,  below 
Mianduab,  there  are  no  customs-houses.  The  govern- 
ment does  not  call  all  these  establishments  for  the 
destruction  of  prosperity  "  customs-houses."  When 
complaints  are  made,  it  will  say,  "  Oh,  that  is  not  a 
customs-house ;  the  man  simply  has  a  right  to  collect 
a  small  sum  for  each  box  or  bale  carried  by."  For 
that  right  some  government  official  received  his  pesh- 
hash,  or  bribe. 

The  dread  of  the  Evil  Eye  is  heavy  upon  the  Per- 

*  Recently  to  the  disgust  of  many  Persians,  the  custom 
administration  as  well  as  the  post,  has  been  placed  in  charge  of 
efficient  and  honest  Belgians. 


3^8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sian.  lie  shudders  at  tlie  evil  which  a  complimentary 
word  about  his  child  will  bring.  He  puts  the  bone  of 
an  animal,  a  horse  or  a  donkey,  in  the  wall  of  a  new 
house.  A  skull,  or  a  jaw-bone,  or  a  leg  is  over  the 
doorway  of  many  a  village  gate,  or  stable,  vineyard, 
or  house.  In  one  wall  I  saw  the  whole  skeleton  of  a 
donkey,  buried  in  this  public  and  ghastly  way  that  the 
Evil  Eye  might  not  affect  the  garden  within.  Among 
the  ignorant  the  cold,  still  eye  of  the  camera  lens  is 
a  terrifying  thing.  At  Khokhurt,  before  its  silent 
gaze,  a  group  of  children  clung  together,  and  then 
fled  in  shivering  terror  lest  the  glittering  brass  ring 
in  the  black  box  were  the  Evil  Eye.  The  camera  is 
often  a  safer  defence  than  fire-arms.  A  crowd  of 
naked,  savage  beggars  fell  upon  us  once  ready  for 
supplication  or  theft,  as  might  be  most  expedient.  The 
whole  crowd  fled  in  fear,  running  like  deer  across  the 
desert,  crying,  "  Oh,  he's  killing  us,  he's  killing  us," 
when  the  clear,  steady  camera  eye  was  pointed  at  them. 
Bartimreus  sits  by  the  wayside,  blind  and  begging, 
as  he  did  when  Jesus  saw  him  and  gav,e  him  vision. 
Often  his  home  is  in  a  pile  of  stones  and  he  will  rise 
as  the  sound  of  the  horses'  steps  comes  near  and  walk 
out  into  the  road  lifting  up  his  sightless  eyes  and  ask- 
ing in  Allah's  name.  But  the  lepers  are  most  pitiable 
of  all.  Many  cities  and  towns  have  each  its  little  group 
of  these  representatives  of  uncleanness  and  sin.  They 
sit  at  the  gate  or  by  the  side  of  the  road  or  against 
the  wall  of  a  bridge,  wrapped  about,  desolate,  only 
awaiting  deliverance.  Near  Tabriz  there  is  a  little 
settlement  at  the  foot  of  "  Leper  Hill."  The  lepers 
do  not  cry  out  complaints.  Many  of  them  do  not  ask 
with  words,  but  the  poor  hand  is  stretched  out  for 
alms  and  the  marred  and  wrecked  visage,  the  ruin  of 
a  human  face  is  lifted  up  with  the  piteous  wail,  "  O 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  329 

Creator  God !  O  Creator  God !  "  The  appeal  is  to 
Him,  the  Creator  God,  with  whom  is  mercy  and  from 
whom  is  all  deliverance.  That  leper  cry  sounds  the 
depths  of  all  power  and  peace,  "  O  Creator  God !  " 

Another  denizen  of  the  hig^hway  who  arouses  feel- 
ings not  of  pity  and  sympathy,  but  of  intense  loath- 
ing and  disgust,  is  the  dervish.  No  one  who  has  not 
been  in  the  East,  where  holiness  is  synonymous  with 
asceticism,  can  understand  the  full  force  of  the  mo- 
tives, which  led  Jesus  to  lay  Himself  open  to  the 
epithets,  "  a  gluttonous  man  and  a  wine  bibber."  It 
was  absolutely  necessary  that  He  should  make  it  plain 
that  asceticism  is  not  holiness.  But  Jesus's  ideals  do 
not  prevail  in  the  East,  and  the  ascetic  is  the  holy  man. 
Every  man  who  aspires  to  religious  reputation  or  in- 
fluence must  present  at  least  the  external  appearance 
of  an  ascetic  life.  The  beeriin  or  public  apartment  of 
the  mollahs  must  be  bare  and  unadorned,  rich  and 
effeminate  as  their  andcrwi  or  inner  apartment  may 
be,  and  the  supposed  ascetic  life  of  the  dervish  secures 
for  him  the  greatest  reverence  on  the  part  of  the  re- 
ligious. The  more  ascetic  he  is,  the  more  ascetic  he 
appears  to  be,  the  greater  his  reputation  for  holiness. 
As  a  result  the  dervish  is  the  most  blasphemous  and 
loathsome  thing  I  have  seen  in  any  land.  He  is  the 
denial  of  God  in  more  points  than  the  open  sinner.  He 
is  the  personification  of  that  which  God  detests.  He  is  so 
unclean  as  to  be  foul  and  diseased.  He  does  not  work. 
He  has  no  divine  virility.  "  Quit  you  like  men  "  are 
meaningless  words  to  him.  His  ambition  is  to  attain 
to  the  utter  uselessness  of  the  life  of  a  dog,  who  is  a 
filth  breeder,  not  even  a  scavenger.  He  whines  and 
cringes  and  holding  a  faith  which  proclaims  the  Chris- 
tian abject  and  unclean,  sneaks  at  the  Christian's  heel 
and  begs  from  the  unclean  hand!     I  have  never  seen 


330       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

anything  to  which  it  seemed  more  just  and  fitting  that 
the  Son  of  God,  who  loved  cleanness  and  worked  till 
Mis  friends  said  He  was  beside  Himself,  should  say, 
"  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  My  mouth." 

Apart  from  the  representatives  of  human  need  and 
suffering  on  one  hand  and  of  putrid  religiosity  on  the 
other,  the  highways  have  their  multitude  of  beggars, 
travelling  or  coming  out  from  village  and  town  to  beg 
from  the  pilgrims.  With  some,  begging  is  a  supple- 
mentary means  of  increasing  their  income,  with  others 
it  is  a  profession.  A  physical  deformity  is  an  aid  but 
it  is  not  indispensable,  while  a  vigorous  frame  and  full 
ability  to  earn  an  honest  living  are  no  impediments. 
The  pilgrims  have  money.  All  their  earnings  many  of 
them  carry  with  them.  They  are  going  to  Kerbela  to 
accumulate  merit,  and  all  the  merit  that  can  be  accu- 
mulated on  the  way  by  deeds  of  charity — whether  the 
charity  is  a  curse  and  a  sin  matters  not — is  so  much 
gain.  In  the  midst  of  these  beggars  and  remembering 
that  Jesus  lived  in  just  the  same  conditions,  it  is  easy 
to  understand  the  perplexity  of  those  who  stumble  at 
Jesus's  words,  "  From  him  that  taketh  away  thy  cloak 
withhold  not  thy  coat  also.  Give  to  every  one  that 
askcth  thee ;  and  of  him  that  taketh  away  thy  goods 
ask  them  not  again." 

The  pilgrim  caravans  are  of  all  sorts.  Some  are 
collections  of  poor  labourers  trudging  on  foot  in  a 
crowd.  Now  and  then  a  man  of  sufficient  standing  to 
have  "  retainers,"  curious  sycophantic  parasites  fos- 
tered by  the  peculiar  conditions,  rides  along,  fol- 
lowed by  his  satellites.  Often  a  man  with  his  harem 
is  passed.  The  women  ride  in  the  main  in  kajavas 
or  cage-like  boxes,  covered  with  red  and  green  cloth, 
and  balanced  one  on  either  side  of  a  strong,  sure- 
footed mule  or  horse.     It  is  hard  for  the  horse  and  it 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  331 

is  hard  for  the  women  who  ride  cramped  up  and 
roughly  joggled.  Many  of  the  pilgrims  on  the  Tabriz- 
Hamadan  highway  are  from  Russia.  The  territory 
taken  from  Persia  by  Russia  two  generations  ago  re- 
mains Persian  in  its  customs  and  religions,  and  multi- 
tudes of  poor  and  rich  take  the  long  journey  (at  least 
thirty-six  days  continuous  travel  by  caravan  time)  to 
Kerbela.  We  saw  these  caravans  going  gaily  and  well 
equipped,  and  other  caravans  which  had  once  been  like 
them,  returning  drearily,  foot-sore,  and  weary,  ragged 
and  plundered.  For  the  pilgrims  are  pillaged  by  every 
one.  They  have  not  been  accustomed  to  have  money 
or  to  travel,  and  at  every  stopping-place  they  are  im- 
posed upon  and  defrauded.  About  the  shrines  a  great 
crowd  of  harpies  hovers,  mollahs  and  adventurers,  and 
the  poor  pilgrims  come  away  at  last  with  one  of  the 
great  obligations  imposed  by  their  religion  met,  and 
with  much  merit  laid  up  on  high,  but  with  money 
gone,  new  vices  learned,  new  fanaticism  developed  for 
the  defence  of  new  superstitions.  The  sight  of  one 
returning  pilgrimage  of  Russian  peasants  I  shall  never 
forget,  as  begrimed  and  exhausted  it  toiled  up  a  steep 
and  rocky  mountain.  Two  horses  were  left  and  were 
ridden  by  the  women.  One  man  led  an  old  blind  man 
by  a  rope.  The  rabble  crept  along  in  rags.  "  That  is  the 
way  they  come  back,"  said  one  of  the  Persian  servants 
with  us.  The  sophisticated  come  back  differently,  but 
as  Mecca  spreads  the  cholera  over  the  whole  area  from 
which  its  pilgrimage  is  fed,  so  Kerbela  and  Meshed 
especially  spread  poverty,  vice,  and  superstition  over 
Persia. 

The  pilgrims  on  this  highway  are  all  travelling  to 
Kerbela,  two  days'  journey  Southwest  of  Bagdad, 
where  Hassan,  the  son  of  Ali,  who  was  Mohammed's 
cousin,  and  married  his  daughter  Fatima,  was  killed. 


22"^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

AH  is  the  great  prophet  of  Shiah  Mohammedanism, 
and  the  Shiahs  hold  that  both  temporal  and  spiritual 
power  should  have  descended  in  the  hands  of  his  pos- 
terity. Hassan  and  Hosein,  his  two  sons,  Shiahism  re- 
guards  as  its  martyrs,  and  celebrates  their  death  each 
year  in  the  month  of  Moharrem.  Kerbela,  accord- 
ini;Iy,  is  its  great  shrine.  Though  in  Turkish  and  so 
Sunni  territory,  it  is  the  centre  of  the  Shiah  faith.  Its 
great  theological  centre  is  here.  Here  its  dead  desire 
to  be  buried.  Hither  its  disciples  come  on  their  ardu- 
ous pilgrimages,  bearing  the  bones  of  the  dead  in  long, 
suggestive  boxes  tied  on  the  caravan  horses,  and  at 
once  distinguishable. 

The  pilgrimage  is  not  productive  of  humility.  On 
approaching  a  village  the  travellers  will  set  up  a  long 
wail  to  let  the  people  know  they  are  passing  through, 
and  the  simple  people  will  run  out  and  kiss  their  hands 
and  ask  for  their  blessing,  or  a  little  share  in  the  great 
merit  the  pilgrimage  earns.  Coming  out  of  the  city  of 
Klioi  one  fine  morning,  we  saw  the  long,  broad  road 
filled  with  people  bidding  a  large  party  of  holy  pil- 
grims farewell.  Returning,  laden  with  sanctity,  the 
pilgrims  have  yet  greater  blessings  to  bestow.  A  com- 
pany of  well-dressed  Russian  IMoslems  passed  us  one 
day,  the  women  clad  in  men's  clothes,  even  to  the  Rus- 
sian boots,  and  riding  astride,  and  at  each  village  the 
hands  of  this  company  were  kissed  repeatedly.  Ray- 
mond Lull's  words  are  suggested  at  every  turn :  "  We 
see  the  pilgrims  travelling  away  into  distant  lands  to 
seek  Thee,  while  Thou  art  so  near  that  every  man, 
if  he  W'Ould,  might  find  Thee  in  his  own  house  and 
chamber.  .  .  .  The  pilgrims  are  so  deceived  by 
false  men  whom  they  meet  in  taverns  and  churches, 
that  many  of  them,  when  they  return  home,  show 
themselves  to  be  far  worse  than  they  were  when  they 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  333 

set  out  on  their  pilgrimage."  Men  who  have  visited 
one  of  the  Shiah  shrines  are  called  thereafter,  as  a 
title  of  honour,  by  the  name  of  the  shrine,  "  Meshedi," 
"  Kerbelai,"  while  those  who  have  made  the  great  pil- 
grimage to  Mecca  are  called  "  Hadji,"  or  "  pilgrim." 
One  day,  on  the  Tabriz  road,  near  Ticon-tappeh,  we 
met  a  large  mollah,  well  clad,  riding  a  fine  horse,  who 
greeted  us  cordially,  and  said  in  reply  to  our  greeting 
that  he  was  going  to  Kerbela  for  the  seventh  time. 
We  asked  why  the  arduous  pilgrimages  were  under- 
taken. "  They  bring  great  holiness,"  he  replied.  We 
observed  respectfully  that  he  must  be  a  very  holy  man, 
to  which  he  assented  with  a  deprecating  nod  of  the 
head.  "  What  good  will  the  pilgrimage  do,"  we  in- 
quired, "  if  the  heart  be  wrong  withm  ?  "  "  That  is 
true,"  he  said,  "  it  would  do  no  good,"  and  he  quoted 
a  Persian  ode  about  the  two  shrines,  Medina-Mecca 
without,  and  the  heart  within,  and  the  futility  of  visit- 
ing the  former  unless  the  latter  be  made  holy  and 
sweet.  We  asked  him  of  the  cost  of  the  pilgrimages. 
He  admitted  that  they  drained  the  country  of  money, 
that  they  took  the  life-time  savings  of  many  and 
squandered  them,  that  the  money  wasted  would  suffice 
to  make  good  roads,  drain  the  bogs,  irrigate  the  desert 
plains,  care  for  the  diseased  and  the  poor.  "  Our  re- 
ligion," he  added,  "  provides  for  all  these  things,  too." 
"  Yes,"  rejoined  Mr.  Coan,  of  Urumia,  who  was 
with  us,  "  it  may  provide  for  them,  but  where  are 
they?  Our  book  says  a  tree  is  to  be  judged  by  its 
fruits.  Your  religion  produces  unhappy  homes,  bad 
roads,  poverty,  waste,  desert,  swamps,  and  desolation. 
If  it  does  not  produce,  it  tolerates  all  these,  with  no 
attempt  at  all  at  remedy.  Have  you  ever  heard  of  the 
fruits  of  a  pure  Christianity?  They  are  happy  homes, 
commerce,   and   close   social    relations   of  peace,   and 


334       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

progress  among  nations,  comfort,  thrift,  prosperity 
and  love."  "  Yes,  Sahib,"  repHed  the  mollah,  "  it  is 
a  great  subject."  The  open  mind  was  as  absent  as 
the  open  heart. 

either  Alussuhnans  have  two  rephes  to  this  argu- 
ment, however.  Some  say  that  the  Christians  being 
the  devil's  children,  and  the  devil  being  the  god  of 
this  world,  he  gives  his  children  all  present  and  carnal 
comforts,  while  the  Moslem  looks  for  his  reward  in 
the  world  to  come.  But  this  is  the  complete  abandon- 
ment of  the  teachings  of  Mohammed  and  the  practice 
of  Moslems  from  his  day  until  now.  Mohammed  had 
no  more  consuming  conviction  than  that  there  is  one 
God,  the  living  and  true,  and  that  He  is  the  world's 
sovereign.  With  him  there  had  been  no  atheistic  ab- 
dication of  the  sovereignty  in  favour  of  the  evil  one. 
And  as  for  carnal  comforts,  the  prospect  and  promise 
of  them  have  been  the  life-power  of  Islam.  Others 
meet  the  appeal  to  the  fruits  of  religion  by  saying. 
"  These  are  the  dark  ages  of  Islam.  There  was  a  time 
when  Mussulmans  held  the  learning  of  the  world,  and 
carried  light  everywhere,  but  now  the  reaction  has 
come,  and  the  light  of  Islam  is  shaded  for  a  time,  just 
as  in  the  Dark  Ages  of  Christianity  the  light  of  Chris- 
tianitv  was  obscured.  Compare  the  fruits  of  Islam 
in  its  luminous  days  with  the  fruits  of  the  contempo- 
rary Christianity."  To  this  there  arc  obvious  replies, 
but  they  do  not  always  convince  a  man  who  knows 
just  enough  to  know  nothing  of  lucid  reasoning  or 
historic  verity. 

The  Persian  dislikes  to  grow  grey.  He  is  especially 
averse  to  a  white  beard.  The  shaved  head  saves  him 
from  grey  hair.  Accordingly  when  a  man  of  long, 
lustrous  black  beard  finds  it  turning  silver,  he  sud- 
denly appears  with  it  dyed  a  glorious  red  with  the  dye 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  335 

of  the  blood  plant,  which  is  also  used  to  colour  the 
finger  nails  and  hands,  with  a  stain  that  resembles  the 
stain  of  nicotine,  or  of  the  juice  of  walnut  husks,  though 
it  is  less  temporary  than  the  latter.  One  of  the  most 
common  and  unfailingly  ludicrous  sights  of  the  high- 
way is  an  old  red-bearded  man,  clad  in  rags,  riding  a 
small  donkey,  and  keeping  the  little  beast  on  a  trot  by 
v/orking  his  half-naked  legs,  ending  in  great  ark-like 
shoes,  in  and  out  like  two  pump-handles.  The  feet 
do  not  touch  the  donkey  at  all,  but  the  swinging  mo- 
tion is  understood,  and  so  long  as  it  is  kept  up,  the 
swinging  red-bearded  patriarch  and  the  wee,  patient 
beast  skip  along  merrily. 

Bread  and  cheese  are  the  staple  articles  of  food  on 
the  highway  or  at  home.  The  cheese  is  white  and 
sour.  The  bread  is  often  delicious,  if  made  of  clean 
flour  and  well  baked.  It  is  almost  invariably  eaten 
damp,  however,  so  that  it  may  be  easily  bent  and  serve 
as  spoon  and  fork.  Pocket-knife  or  none  is  the  rule 
as  to  knives.  Sometimes  there  are  wooden  spoons. 
As  a  rule  all  dip  into  a  common  dish,  as  our  Lord  and 
His  disciples  did  in  the  Upper  Room.  The  bread  is 
thin  and  baked  in  the  North  in  long,  oblong,  "  loaves," 
two  feet  or  less  in  length  and  half  as  broad,  and  the 
thickness  of  extra  heavy,  coarse  wrapping  paper.  In 
the  South  these  sheets  are  round.  There  are  other  kinds 
of  bread  baked  as  cakes,  or  on  hot  pebbles,  each  of 
which  leaves  its  indentation,  but  the  common  bread 
is  baked  in  urn-like,  upright  earthen  jars,  sub- 
merged in  the  ground,  similar  in  name  and  char- 
acter to  the  ovens  used  by  the  Jews  in  Old  Testa- 
ment times  (Lev.  ii.  4;  I  Kings  xvii.  2;  Isa.  xliv.  15). 

At  Khokhurt,  journeying  South,  the  appearance  of 
the  houses  suddenly  changes.  Only  flat  roofs,  used 
in  the   summer  as  the  sleeping  places  of  the  village 


22^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

folk,  were  seen  before.  Here  the  roofs  are  all  domed. 
There  is  no  wood  for  use  as  rafters,  so  each  roof  is 
made  up  of  one,  two,  three,  or  more  domes,  each  with 
a  small  hole  at  the  top,  serving  as  the  only  entrance 
of  light  and  air,  save  the  door.  In  Bagdad  and  other 
Southern  cities  the  spaces  between  the  domes  are  filled 
up,  making  the  roofs  level  and  the  houses"  warm  in 
the  cold  and  cool  in  the  warm  weather.  In  the  villages 
the  domes  remain,  resembling  a  great  community  of 
grey  ant  hills.  The  single  room  of  such  a  house  gives 
no  impression  of  the  number  of  occupants.  From  sub- 
terranean caverns,  through  narrow  and  low-roofed 
passage  ways,  sheep,  horses,  cows,  oxen  emerge,  and 
in  the  early  morning  march  past  the  bed  of  the  travel- 
ler, who  has  come  in  belated  and  been  given  shelter 
for  the  night. 

As  the  traveller  through  Poland  is  surprised  to  see 
so  few  churches  in  the  villages  through  which  the  rail- 
road runs,  so  the  absence  of  mosques  in  the  villages 
of  Persia  is  a  constant  surprise.  To  be  sure,  a  Shiah 
mosque,  which  is  never  adorned  with  minarets,  is  not 
so  conspicuous  as  the  Sunni  mosque,  but  in  most  of 
the  villages  through  which  we  passed  there  seemed 
to  be  no  prayer-house,  nor  was  the  voice  of  the  muez- 
zin heard,  calling  the  faithful  to  prayer;  but  Islam  is 
evident  in  the  coarse  conduct  and  words  which  greet 
European  women,  in  the  fidelity  of  some  believers  to 
the  hours  of  morning  and  evening  prayer  wherever 
they  may  be,  and  in  the  general  prevalence  everywhere 
of  that  demoralization  of  life,  that  decay  of  fibre  and 
sinew  which  one  would  expect  in  a  country  where 
Islam,  on  the  contention  of  its  most  intelligent  defend- 
ers, and  in  spite  of  the  blazing  Christian  light  about 
it,  is  in  its  "  Dark  Ages." 

One  sees  no  drunkenness  on  the  highways.     Much 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  337 

may  be  justly  said  regarding  the  absurd  plea  that  Is- 
lam precluded  tbe  use  of  intoxicants,  but  the  highway 
people  are  sober  and  its  life  a  cheery,  social,  mutually 
helpful  life.  One  chavadar  helps  another  out  of  a 
bog  or  a  drift.  If  one  man  lies  to  you  about  the  road 
or  distance,  another  may  possibly  tell  you  the  truth. 
While  the  majority  follow  the  command  given  to  the 
seventy,  and  salute  no  man  by  the  way,  many  give  a 
cheerful  greeting  and  wish  God's  blessing  even  on  the 
life  and  journey  of  an  infidel.  One  Persian  was  able 
to  go  so  far  as  "  Bon  jour,  monsieur,"  but  he  answered 
the  reply  in  his  native  tongue.  The  wealthier  Per- 
sians, who  have  travelled  at  all,  usually  know  French, 
but  the  native  speech  or  speeches — Persian,  Turkish, 
Armenian,  Syriac,  Hebrew,  Kurdish,  Arabic, — are  the 
languages  of  the  road. 

The  Persian  fields  and  hills  are  absolutely  devoid 
of  trees,  save  where  they  grow  by  the  water  courses 
or  in  the  semi-tropical  districts.  In  the  fall  all 
is  sere  and  brown,  and  the  great  flocks  of  sheep 
and  goats  driven  out  from  some  village  or  from 
some  camp  of  the  black  huts  of  Kedar,  crop 
over  what  the  civilized  eye  sees  only  as  a  waste 
lacking  any  green  herb  or  nutritious  thing.  Children 
of  foreigners,  born  in  Persia,  look  with  surprise  and 
amusement  at  the  little,  worthless  tails  of  the  sheep 
at  home.  They  have  been  used  to  seeing  sheep  whose 
tails  hang  down  behind  as  heavy  and  large  often  as 
a  ham.  The  tail  is  wholly  fat,  and  in  a  good  sheep 
gives  enough  fat  for  the  cooking  of  the  mutton,  and 
in  Persia  meat  is  served  swimming  in  grease.  Some- 
times, though  seldom,  the  tail  grows  so  heavy  that, 
as  in  Palestine,  a  little  cart  must  be  attached  behind 
on  which  the  sheep  can  carry  around  its  tail.  What 
a  mighty  moral  is  hidden  here!     Goats  are  cheaper 


22^        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

than  chickens  for  food.  We  hougiit  one  at  Khosh- 
magam  for  fifty  cents.  A  man  came  into  the  yard, 
and  before  our  door  killed  it  with  his  pocket-knife. 
Without  other  implements  he  cleaned  it.  A  man  stole 
its  head  and  feet  while  the  servant  was  not  looking. 
The  dogs  came  in  and  licked  up  the  blood  and  cleared 
off  all  traces  of  the  butcher.  An  old  woman  came  and 
prayed  for  the  skin.  The  butcher  brought  the  goat  in 
on  a  tray.  In  a  quarter  of  an  hour  our  fifty  cents  were 
changed  before  our  eyes  into  a  tray  of  fresh  goat  meat, 
and  there  was  no  evidence  of  the  process  of  trans- 
formation. 

One  of  the  missionaries  at  home  from  Persia  on 
furlough,  was  once  reported  in  a  local  paper's  account 
of  an  address  to  have  said  that  an  unveiled  woman 
was  never  seen  in  Persia.  The  local  reporter  knew  no 
better,  and  he  printed  his  ignorance.  The  missionary 
had  seen  more  women's  faces  unveiled  than  veiled.  In 
the  cities  and  fanatical  places  the  women  of  well-to-do 
homes  are  veiled  upon  the  streets,  but  the  poorer  wo- 
men of  the  cities,  and  thfe  great  multitudes  of  village 
women,  while  occasionally  drawing  their  head-cover- 
ings over  their  mouths,  go  about  with  open  face.  But 
this  emancipation  is  no  evidence  of  liberty.  Their  life 
is  a  perpetual  petty  slavery  but  many  do  not  know 
that  it  is  slavery,  because  they  have  grown  up  into  a 
stolid  endurance  of  its  repression  and  its  littleness. 

The  day  before  reaching  Hamadan,  the  intervening 
ridges  slip  away  and  the  snow-clad  peaks  of  the  El- 
vend  Mountains,  which  overlook  Hamadan,  and  the 
wide,  fertile  plain,  where  Ecbatana  lay  of  old,  rise  up 
cool,  white  and,  in  the  wann  weather,  inviting  and 
promising.  But  they  are  many  miles  away.  The 
Persian  highway  gives  the  traveller  many  a  far  away 
vision.     Above  all  others,  there  is  one  of  a  far  away 


Glimpses  of  Life  on  a  Persian  Highway  339 

glory,  before  which  the  radiance  of  the  Elvend  peaks 
under  the  sunlight  pales  and  dies  away,  when  Persia 
even  shall  be  full  of  the  great  glory,  not  of  snow-peak, 
fertile  valley  and  quiet  village,  but  of  the  Lord;  and, 
after  all,  why  should  it  be  far  away? 


XXVI 

ON  THE  CORPSE  ROAD 

IT  is  a  grim  name  for  a  road,  and  it  is  a  gruesome 
thing  to  travel  and  to  lodge  with  corpses  for  com- 
panions. But  it  is  a  name  the  highway  from 
Persia  to  the  Moslem  shrines  on  the  Euphrates 
well  deserves.  For  centuries  streams  of  pilgrims  have 
poured  down  from  the  great  plateau  to  the  Mesopota- 
mian  plain  to  worship  at  the  tomb  of  Ali  at  Nejef, 
and  to  bury  their  dead  in  the  holy  soil  of  Ker- 
bela.  In  past  years  the  pilgrims  were  numbered 
by  multitudes,  and  the  dead  could  scarcely  rest 
well  if  not  laid  under  the  shadow  of  the  shrines 
at  Kerbela,  whose  sanctity  even  Mecca  can  scarce 
surpass,  but  the  growing  exactions  of  Turkish  cus- 
toms-houses, the  desire  of  the  late  Shah  to  secure 
for  the  shrine  at  Meshed — within  his  own  dominions 
— the  profit  of  the  pilgrimages,  the  prohibition  of  the 
importation  into  Turkey  of  bodies  lately  deceased — 
thus  giving  the  ardour  and  enthusiasm  of  relatives  time 
to  cool, — have  all  tended  to  diminish  the  number  of  the 
dead  whose  bones  zealous  friends  carry  over  the  many 
miles  to  rest  beside  Hosein's.  But  even  still,  the  trav- 
eller passes  scores  of  the  long  boxes,  borne  on  horses 
or  mules,  each  of  which  contains  the  bones  of  a  true 
believer  in  the  Prophet. 

Properly  speaking  the  Corpse  Road  is  not  a  road, 
save  here  and  there.  It  is  the  trail  of  paths 
over  which  caravans  go  from  Persia  to  Bagdad, 
converging  in  Persia  near  Kermanshah,  where  from 
Teheran,  Tabriz,  Hamadan  and  Ispahan,  East,  North 
and  South,  the  routes  conjoin.     It  is  in  the  main  the 

340 


On  the  Corpse  Road  341 

trail  over  which  the  armies  of  Darius  and  Cyrus,  Alex- 
ander and  Seleucus  must  have  marched,  and  over  which 
the  fervent  hosts  of  Islam  drove  the  last  of  the  Chos- 
roes  until  on  the  plains  of  Nehavend  Persia  was  sub- 
jected to  the  Caliphate.  Great  history  was  made  on 
the  mountains  and  plains  over  which  the  Corpse  Road 
runs.  Its  present  course  may  be  traced  by  those  who 
wish  to  follow  it  upon  the  map,  from  Hamadan  through 
Assadabad,  Kanagaver,  Besitun,  Sahneh  to  Kerman- 
shah  and  thence  through  Harunabad,  Kerind,  Sarpul, 
Kasr-i-Shirin,  in  Persia,  and  Khanakin,  Shahraban  and 
Yacubieh  in  Turkey,  to  Bagdad  and  Kerbela,  which  is 
two  or  three  days'  journey  South-west  of  the  city  of 
the  Caliphs.  When  a  score  of  years  ago  the  Shah  of 
Persia  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Kerbela,  the  road  was 
put  in  good  order,  bridges  were  built,  bogs  were 
drained,  rocks  were  removed,  and  down  the  precipitous 
side  of  the  Zagros  mountains,  where  the  plateau  sud- 
denly falls  away  to  the  low  valleys  which  run  out  to 
the  Mesopotamia  plains,  a  good  "  switch  back  "  road 
was  constructed,  protected  by  stone  walls.  Traces  of 
this  beneficent  wall  remain,  but  nothing  has  been  done 
for  the  great  highway  since.  In  the  winter  the  moun- 
tain sections  are  like  slippery  precipices,  and  the  plains 
great  bogs  ;  but  though  trade  has  multiplied  many  fold, 
and  the  cost  of  a  good  road  would  be  repaid  in  ten 
years,  nothing  is  done.  With  that  shameless  and  con- 
temptible acceptance  of  existing  conditions,  which  is 
one  of  the  fruits  of  the  fatalism  of  Islam,  traders,  pil- 
grims and  chavadars,  who  are  the  freight  carriers,  re- 
sign themselves  to  the  facts.  "  This  is  Persia,"  they 
say  or  *'  This  is  Turkey ;  what  is  the  use  ?  " 

On  the  Persian  side  of  the  border,  the  caravanserais 
have  in  the  main  fallen  into  ruins.  In  many  places 
there  were  once  durable  brick  inns.     Shah  Abbas  in 


342       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

his  day  built  so  many  that  every  stone  or  brick  cara- 
vanserai is  attributed  to  him.  From  Kasr-i-Shirin  to 
Meshed,  right  across  Persia,  tradition  says  he  planted 
a  line  of  caravanserais  to  facilitate  travel  and  trade. 
In  Turkey  the  inns  are  substantial  and  capacious, 
with  large  open  squares  in  the  centre,  around  which 
the  brick  stables  are  built,  with  arched  recesses  in  the 
ponderous  walls,  open  in  front  for  the  travellers.  But 
in  Persia,  on  the  Corpse  Road,  and  on  most  of  the 
roads,  horses  and  men  share  the  stables  and  houses  of 
the  villagers.  West  of  the  Elvend  mountains,  which 
rise  like  a  great  wall  behind  Hamadan,  the  country  is 
all  Kurdish,  and  with  Kurdish  houses  and  fare  the 
Corpse  Road  wayfarer  must  be  content.  It  is  a  low 
scale  of  life.  In  many  houses  animals  and  people  live 
near  together,  and  in  almost  all  they  enter  by  the 
same  door.  The  woman  with  the  familiar  spirit  whom 
Saul  consulted  at  Endor,  and  who  "  had  with  her  a 
calf  in  the  house  "  has  her  parallel  in  most  Kurdish 
women.  West  of  Kermanshah  life  falls  lower  and 
lower  to  the  border.  At  Sarpul,  on  the  site  of  Hol- 
wan — one  of  the  great  Persian  cities  in  the  days  of  the 
Arab  conquest — the  best  room  we  could  find,  an  earth 
structure  with  reed  walls,  plastered  with  one  coating 
of  mud,  was  the  vestibule  to  an  inner  and  darker  room 
occupied  by  a  cow,  a  calf  and  a  donkey,  who  got  air 
and  light  through  our  room,  and  passed  to  and  fro 
through  it.  In  many  houses  the  horses,  cattle,  sheep 
and  donkeys  have  separate,  unlighted  rooms,  while  the 
family  or  families  lived  on  earth  platforms  a  foot  high 
in  different  corners  of  the  large  room,  lighted  only 
through  the  door  and  passed  through  by  all  the  ani- 
mals going  in  and  out.  The  furniture  of  most  of  these 
houses  is  of  earth.  Flour,  wheat  and  oil  are  kept  in 
earthenware  pots,  often  of  great  size,  and  unburned. 


On  the  Corpse  Road  343 

At  Sarpul,  where  there  is  Hltlc  snow  or  frost,  the  grain 
is  put  in  a  hole  in  the  ground  and  covered  with  straw 
until  needed.  The  house  yards  are  sometimes  honey- 
combed with  the  barley  pits,  where  they  are  not  bogged 
with  mud.  On  the  Turkish  side  of  the  border  the 
people  dress  better,  and  live  in  more  respectable  houses. 
There  are  oranges,  dates  and  vegetables  to  be  bought. 
All  the  buildings  are  of  better  character.  If  the  road 
ran  through  the  Arab  villages  of  the  plain,  as  it  does 
west  of  Bagdad,  life  would  fall  lower  still.  "  When 
you  go  there,"  said  one  of  the  Persians  with  us,  "  you 
go  under  the  earth." 

The  mighty  past  has  left  its  monuments  on  the 
Corpse  Road.  At  Kangaver  are  the  ruins  of  the  great 
temple  of  Minerva,  which  Dr.  Van  Dyke  introduces 
in  his  story  of  The  Other  Wise  Man.  At  Sahneh  there 
is  a  cave  cut  into  the  face  of  a  stone  mountain,  up 
which  we  were  drawn  with  ropes,  that  we  might  enter 
this  sepulchre  of  some  unremembered  king.  Above 
the  squalid  little  village  of  Besitun,  called  Baghistan 
on  some  maps,  in  a  recess  in  the  great  craggy  peak  is 
the  famous  inscription  of  Darius,  showing  the  gigantic 
figure  of  Darius  with  his  servant  and  armour  bearer, 
preceded  by  a  chain  of  courtiers  and  recording  the 
conqueror's  achievements.  Near  Kermanshah  is  the 
Tagh-i-Bustan  commemorating  the  hunting  exploits  of 
a  Persian  monarch  of  smaller  mould  and  a  much  later 
time.  The  walls  and  mounds  of  Holwan  cover  the  val- 
ley about  Sarpul,  and  near  Kasr-i-Shirin  the  buildings 
of  the  later  Chosroes  lie  in  great  ruins,  but  better  pre- 
serving than  aught  else  on  the  Corpse  Road  the  glory 
of  those  days  when 

"  There  was  a  palace  of  kings  ere  the  world  was 
waxen  old," 


344       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

For  miles  and  miles  the  great  brown  stone  walls 
which  shut  in  its  gardens  run  over  valley  and  liill. 
But  the  strength  and  glory  of  those  old  times  are  gone. 
The  vandal  people  deface  the  inscriptions  and  i)illage 
the  old  buildings  for  stone  which  they  will  not  hew  for 
themselves  and  brick  which  they  will  not  burn.  In  the 
Tagh-i-Bustan,  Fath  AH  Shah  the  present  Shah's 
great-grandfather  has  a  gaudy  painted  carving  of  him.- 
self,  with  his  long  beard,  his  thin  waist,  and  several  of 
his  multitudinous  sons.  On  the  face  of  the  great  carv- 
ings at  Besitun,  attributed  to  Alexander,  is  a  tasteless 
carving  in  Arabic,  made  at  the  time  of  the  late  Shah's 
visit  to  Kerbela,  by  some  parasite  who  did  not  scruple 
to  spoil  the  mighty  records  of  the  world  conqueror. 
Modern  Persia,  having  never  done  one  great  thing 
contents  itself  with  obliterating  the  traces  of  its  past 
greatness. 

What  are  the  inscriptions  of  Darius  to  Kurds  ?  They 
would  barter  them  for  goats.  Low  as  their  life  is,  how- 
ever, and  small  as  is  their  world,  the  Kurds  have  qual- 
ities of  which  the  urbane  Persians  speak  with  respect 
and  envy.  There  is  a  free  and  often  loving  home-life 
among  them.  The  family  has  its  hearth,  and  welcomes 
friend  and  stranger  to  it.  In  scores  of  Persian  vil- 
lages through  which  I  have  passed  I  have  almost 
never  seen  a  family  group  gathered  in  a  home-like 
way — the  children  in  their  right  places,  and  that  play- 
ful cheerfulness  present  which  one  sees  in  many  Kurd- 
ish homes.  The  Persians  themselves  speak  of  it.  Yet 
these  Kurds  are  practically  untouched  by  the  gospel. 
Into  the  dialect  spoken  by  those  living  on  the  Corpse 
Road  only  a  portion  of  one  Gospel  has  been  translated. 
That  they  are  not  all  irrevocably  committed  to  Islam 
is  indicated  by  the  large  defection  from  Islam  to  the 
faith  of  the  AH  Illahies,  a  curious  sect  living  along 


On  the  Corpse  Road  345 

this  road,  at  Sahneh,  at  Kerind,  and  to  the  North.  The 
AH  Illahies  are  a  distorted  vindication  of  Henry 
Martyn.  They  have  a  weak  faith,  some  say  no  faith,  in 
the  Koran,  and  regard  Moses,  Jesus,  Mohammed,  Ali, 
Henry  Martyn  and  David  Livingston  with  some 
of  the  patriarchs  and  prophets,  as  divine  manifesta- 
tions. When  Henry  Martyn  came  to  Persia  in  the 
early  years  of  this  century  he  was  rejected  and  reviled. 
Now,  a  Moslem  sect  deifies  him.  We  stayed  with  a 
Sayid  at  Sahneh,  who  is  a  leader  among  the  Ali  Illahies 
of  his  town,  and  who  refused  money  as  we  left,  saying 
"  We  are  the  people  of  the  truth,  and  we  must  re- 
ceive freely  all  the  people  of  God."  But  some  said  he 
had  other  motives.  The  sacrament  of  the  Ali  Illahies 
is  a  form  of  fire  worship.  Their  dervishes  have  learned 
to  eat  it  (or  to  appear  to)  as  part  of  the  ceremony.  A 
fire  eating  dervish  is  not  a  pleasant  spectacle,  but  no 
dervish  is. 

And  the  Corpse  Road  is  full  of  dervishes.  They  prey 
upon  the  pilgrims.  Each  evening  at  the  stopping  places 
the  dervishes  go  about  from  house  to  house  begging. 
At  Mian  Tagh  one  came  singing  with  ceaseless  repeti- 
tion, "  O  pilgrim  friend,  give  to  me,  give  to  me  1  So 
make  your  pilgrimage  blessed.  O,  my  soul !  O,  my 
soul !  "  At  Sarpul  a  white-eyed,  erect  Arab  went  about 
with  the  refrain,  "  God  lives ;  God  lives.  There  is 
need  of  bread ;  there  is  need  of  tea ;  there  is  need  of 
sugar;  there  is  need  of  wood.  Blessed  are  those  who 
give.  Peace  be  with  you !  "  He  was  followed  by  a 
curious  trio,  one  a  curly  haired  young  negro;  the 
others,  old,  thin-haired,  stooping  men — all  bare- 
headed, and  the  negro  carrying  a  great  gnarled  der- 
vish's club.  The  negro  was  a  dramatic  and  eloquent 
figure,  who  said,  "  God  will  give ;  God  will  give ;  " 
which  he  explained  to  mean  that  God  had  given  to  us, 


34^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

but  wc  would  not  turn  it  over  to  him ;  which,  indeed, 
we  would  not.  More  complete  neg^ation  of  all  godliness 
than  such  a  dirty,  idle,  ignorant  whining  dervish  it 
would  be  hard  to  conceive. 

The  Corpse  Road  is  lined  with  graveyards.  Every- 
where in  Persia  the  graveyards  are  built  on  the  roads. 
The  Vakil-i-dowleh,  one  of  the  most  prominent  men 
in  Western  Persia,  told  me  these  graves  were  put  on  the 
highways  so  that  pilgrims  passing  by  might  throw  a 
little  dust  on  them,  or  give  them  a  blessing ;  that  from 
every  village  some  one  in  a  generation  went  on  a 
pilgrimage,  so  that  every  road  in  Persia  was  sure  to 
be  traversed  by  pilgrim's  feet.  Often  the  graves  are 
put  directly  in  the  road,  or  the  road  strays  out  of  its 
course  over  to  graves  which  are  usually  unmarked, 
and  not  to  be  identified. 

Kermanshah  is  the  only  place  west  of  Hamadan, 
on  the  road  of  the  dead,  where  there  is  a  Christian 
worker,  until  Bagdad  is  reached.  At  Kermanshah  a 
young  Nestorian  and  his  mother  are  at  work,  finding 
an  open  door  among  the  Jews  and  both  opposition  and 
encouragement  among  Moslems.  We  spent  the  Sab- 
bath with  them,  and  attended  the  little  meeting  in  the 
morning.  A  dozen  Jews  sat  along  the  wall,  and  a 
group  of  children  listened  attentively.  As  I  spoke  to 
the  Jews  of  the  coming  day  when  this  great  race  would 
recognize  in  Jesus  their  Messiah  and  God,  several  in- 
terrupted and  said,  "  We  do ;  we  do."  One  old  man 
rejoined,  "  I  believe  Jesus  was  the  Christ ;  I  know  none 
better  than  He."  At  the  close  they  asserted  that  of 
the  1,500  Jews  in  Kermanshah  not  a  score  disbelieved 
intellectually.  All  were  convinced  that  the  Messiah 
had  come ;  that  Jesus  was  He.  "  But,"  they  said.  "  We 
hold  back.  We  fear  to  confess.  Who  will  marry 
our  dauirhters?    How  shall  we  live?"    But  if  all  who 


On  the  Corpse  Road  347 

believed  conferred  together,  their  difficulties  would 
resolve  themselves.  A  deputation  of  these  Jews  waited 
upon  us  afterward  to  request  that  a  missionary  should 
be  sent  to  their  city;  and  they  presented  the  next  day 
before  we  left,  a  formal  petition  signed  by  their  lead- 
ing men  to  this  effect.  This  was  4heir  petition,  written 
in  Hebrew  and  Persian,  and  sealed : 

"  It  is  petitioned  by  us.  From  the  time  we  first  in- 
vestigated the  Torah,  we  have  been  convinced  that  the 
Lord  Christ  is  true,  and  that  Jesus  is  He.  Continually 
with  heart  and  soul  we  have  received  Him.  Yet,  when 
we  wish  to  go  to  the  church  which  has  been  opened 
here,  we  must  go  in  secret.  The  oppression  of  Islam  is 
severe  upon  us.  On  this  school,  too,  which  has  been 
opened  here,  the  oppression  has  rested.  Because  the 
violence  of  Islam  has  been  bitter  against  us  twenty 
of  the  most  influential  of  our  people  have  accepted 
Islam.  And  now  the  Moslems  say  to  us,  '  Why  do  you 
not  accept  Islam  ?  Why  do  you  go  the  Christian  way  ? ' 
Every  day  they  make  charges  against  us  to  the  govern- 
ment ;  and  they  threaten  to  bring  great  destruction  upon 
us.  We  desire,  therefore,  that  from  among  holy  men 
you  send  a  missionary  to  us  that  he  may  defend  us 
from  violence  and  evil.  So,  we  being  at  peace  may 
pray  for  you.  By  the  hand  of  several  of  us  who  wor- 
ship the  Lord  Christ,  with  the  Holy  Spirit.  We  have 
no  further  petition." 

This  call  rested,  doubtless,  on  a  motive  three  parts 
political  to  one  part  religious.  The  Jews  of  Kerman- 
shah  desire  the  protection  against  wrong  and  injustice, 
which  the  mere  presence  of  a  missionary  everywhere 
brings.  But  it  is  a  call.  The  Jews  elsewhere  are 
hardened.  In  Hamadan  they  are  now  indifferent.  In 
Bagdad,  as  at  home,  they  are  secularized,  and  live 
for  the  present  world.     In  Kermanshah  they  ask. 


348       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

After  all,  all  roads  here  are  roads  of  the  dead.  The 
dead  lie  beside  them.  The  dead  are  borne  over  them; 
and  the  living  on  them  and  beside  them  are  dead.  They 
wait  to  be  brought  into  life  and  immortality.  Moham- 
med did  not  bring  them  life.  His  system,  hard  and 
deadening,  has  chained  them  fast  to  the  dead  past  and 
to  present  death.  And  the  Christian  Church  has  been 
content  to  have  it  so.  The  Moslem  missionary  prob- 
lem she  has  evaded  and  ignored.  Why  should  not  our 
day  be  the  day  when  men — who,  fearing  God,  have 
nothing  else  to  fear,  neither  mollah,  mujtahid,  Shah 
nor  Sultan — should  rise  up  in  joyous  obedience,  and  in 
the  spirit  of  the  chivalric  sacrifice  of  the  Crusaders, 
make  the  "  roads  of  death  "  the  highways  of  life,  on 
which  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord  walk  and  are  glad? 


XXVII 

WHY  CHRISTIANITY  APPEALS  TO  THE  JAPANESE 

SOME  years  ago  in  Tokyo  I  met  two  groups 
of  Japanese  Christians.  One  was  composed 
of  the  leaders  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  in 
the  main  strong,  clear-minded,  well  read,  in- 
telligent men.  The  other  was  made  up  of  women, 
old  and  young,  who  had  not  read  much  except  the 
Bible,  but  who  knew  their  own  hearts  and  the  hearts 
of  others.  To  each  of  these  groups  I  put  this  question. 
What  was  it  in  Christianity  which  led  you  to  accept  it  ? 
These  were  the  answers  of  the  men :  No.  One.  "  It 
was  not  from  any  deep  sense  of  guilt,  but  from  the 
sense  of  dependence  and  of  need  of  restfulness.  This 
feeling  was  far  stronger  with  us  than  any  feeling  of 
need  for  purification  of  conscience.  This  is  the  ex- 
perience of  many.  The  want  of  a  sense  of  sin  and  its 
guilt  is  a  real  defect  in  our  spiritual  life."  No.  Two. 
"  This  is  true.  The  sense  of  sin  comes  later  on.  Very 
few  come  into  the  Church  from  any  idea  of  guilt  or  fear 
of  punishment.  Most  are  seeking  rest,  something  to  tie 
to.  Christianity  gives  them  peace  and  assurance. 
When  they  taste  more  they  know  and  love  more.  And 
as  they  go  on,  the  sense  of  guilt  and  danger  comes, 
but  it  was  not  a  motive  at  the  outset."  No. 
Three.  "  The  virtues  which  Christianity  promotes 
attracted  us.  This  was  my  own  experience." 
No.  Four.  "  There  are  two  classes  of  Christians.  One 
class  comes  in  through  the  persuasion  of  friends,  the 
influence  of  the  social  network,  and  gradually  comes 
to  know  sin.  This  was  my  experience.  I  was  mentally 
convinced  of  my  sins,  but  I  felt  no  grief  for  sin  imtil 

349 


350       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

later.  The  second  class  is  made  up  of  the  unthinking 
people,  who  come  in  through  the  hope  of  getting  some- 
thing better  than  they  have.  They  think  they  can  never 
be  worse  off  and  turn  in  despair  of  all  else  to  Christian- 
ity, hoping  to  find  in  it  some  relief,  either  for  this  life 
or  for  hereafter." 

Of  these  four  men,  the  first  is  an  editor,  the  second  a 
pastor,  the  third  a  layman,  and  the  fourth  a  pastor. 
The  others  agreed  with  them.  When  Joseph  Cook  was 
in  Japan  some  years  ago,  he  asked  a  question  somewhat 
similar  to  this,  of  a  group  of  leading  Christians  and 
carried  away  the  impression  that  Christianity's  assur- 
ance of  a  future  Hfe  had  drawn  many.  I  reminded 
them  of  this  and  asked  whether  the  certain  hope  of  im- 
mortality had  not  attracted  them.  "  No,"  said  No. 
One,  "  Mr.  Cook  misunderstood  us.  We  were  present 
at  that  meeting.  We  were  content  with  this  present  life 
and  wanted  no  more." 

"  But  did  not  the  person  of  Christ  appeal  to  you  at 
all  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Yes,"  they  replied,  "  the  beauty  of 
His  character  appealed  to  us,  especially  His  unselfish- 
ness. We  were  not  affected  by  His  humility,  for  hu- 
mility is  an  artificial  thing  with  us  and  is  discounted 
accordingly.  There  are  no  words  in  which  to  express 
the  ideas  of  Christ's  humility  or  humiliation  save 
terms  which  have  a  fixed  and  ceremonial  meaning,  not 
highly  esteemed  by  the  sincere." 

"  How  does  it  come,"  I  inquired,  "  that  in  a  Buddhist 
land  you  turned  to  Christianity  for  rest.  Buddha's 
doctrine  was  the  way  of  rest.  Buddhism  fails  in  its 
essence,  if  it  fails  in  this.  Is  there  no  rest  in  it?" 
"  Yes,"  they  answered,  "  but  it  is  the  rest  of  stagna- 
tion, tending  downwards.  Christ's  rest  is  the  rest 
of  a  living  peace,  lifting  u])wards.  The  priests  in  the 
temple,  sitting  still,  and  the  old  women  who  worship 


Why  Christianity  Appeals  to  the  Japanese  351 

are  at  rest,  but  they  have  no  aspiration.  It  is  stillness 
without  uplift,  or  strength.  Their  religion  is  indo- 
lence." 

So  the  men  agreed  that  they  had  come  to  Christianity 
for  moral  rest.  Oddly  enough  the  main  sentiment  of 
the  women  was  that  they  had  come  for  mental  assur- 
ance and  yet  the  intellectual  vigour  and  clearness  of 
Christianity  had  influenced  the  men  also  far  more  than 
their  brief  answers  acknowledged.  The  women,  how- 
ever, whose  first  delightful  experience  of  large  intelli- 
gence had  come  with  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  spoke  grate- 
fully of  it.  No.  One  said :  "  I  was  a  devout  Buddhist 
and  felt  that  I  was  saved  by  Amida,  but  in  some  indefi- 
nite way.  What  impressed  me  most  in  Christianity  was 
its  clear  doctrine  of  atonement  and  salvation  through 
Christ.  When  I  became  a  Christian,  I  had  a  box  bought 
from  a  priest  for  fifty  sen,  which  was  to  gain  for  me  an 
entrance  into  heaven.  To  open  it  would  let  loose  an  in- 
fluence which  would  smite  me  blind.  After  my  con- 
version I  decided  to  open  this  and  make  a  trial.  If  it 
did  me  no  harm,  then  Christianity  would  be  sure. 
Otherwise  it  would  be  only  another  disappointment.  I 
opened  the  box  and  found  a  long  strip  of  paper.  Mis- 
sions have  done  much  for  our  land.  It  is  a  land  that 
has  been  lost  in  idolatry,  and  it  is  not  yet  redeemed." 
No.  Two  continued :  "  Before  I  was  a  Christian  I 
used  to  wonder  what  mankind  was  here  for.  Men 
came  and  went,  but  what  for?  My  parents  could  not 
tell.  Then  my  brother  became  an  evangelist  and  sent 
me  a  Bible.  When  my  father  died,  I  went  to  live  with 
my  brother  and  he  taught  me.  It  was  a  long  time  until 
I  came  to  know  the  power  of  Christ  to  save  from 
the  power  of  sin."  No.  Three :  "  My  greatest  pleas- 
ure was  to  go  to  lectures  and  theatres.  I  worshipped  the 
idols  I  saw,  though  I  knew  there  were  unseen  gods. 


2S'^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Then  I  went  to  Christian  lectures  and  heard  there  was 
only  one  God.  I  could  not  understand  this.  Then  one 
of  the  Bible  women  taught  me  that  we  were  all  de- 
scended from  Adam  and  I  determined  to  look  around 
and  see  whether  all  was  one.  Sure  enough,  I  found 
that  all  men  had  two  hands,  two  eyes,  etc.,  and  that 
there  was  unity  everywhere.  So  I  concluded  that  there 
was  one  God.  It  was  only  later  that  I  came  to  know 
Christ."  No.  Four:  "I  was  puzzled  by  seeing  just 
people  in  distress  and  evil  people  exalted.  Christianity, 
with  its  doctrine  of  the  future  life,  explained  this  to 
me."  No.  Five :  "  I  was  a  Buddhist,  with  no  deep 
knowledge  at  all,  only  knowing  that  salvation  is 
through  Buddha,  and  to  be  obtained  by  repeating 
'  Namu  Amida  butsu,'  whose  meaning  I  do  not  and 
did  not  know,  over  and  over.  To  cover  a  coffin  with 
this  written  on  paper  would  save.  My  husband  be- 
came a  Christian  and  I  followed  him.  Christianity 
showed  me  the  way  of  salvation,  that  it  was  Christ. 
Amida  showed  me  no  way.  The  deep  things  I  learned 
later."  No.  Six :  "  I  was  both  a  Buddhist  and  a 
Shintoist,  and  disliked  Christianity  intensely  when  I 
first  heard  it.  My  family  were  among  the  retainers  of 
the  Takugawa  family,  the  last  of  the  Shoguns.  My 
son  became  a  Christian,  and  I  felt  I  must  cast  him  off. 
He  wished  to  go  to  the  theological  school  in  Tokyo 
and  T  agreed,  but  told  him  that  it  meant  separation. 
On  his  way  he  met  an  evangelist  and  told  him  to  come 
to  see  me.  He  did  and  his  conduct  and  my  son's  moved 
me,  I  noticed  other  Christians  also,  and  that  when 
they  gave  up  drink  they  were  reformed,  while  those 
who  promised  before  the  idols  soon  went  back  to  their 
drink  again.  So  I  listened  the  more  to  the  evangelist. 
In  our  family  was  a  Shinto  ])riest  whose  conduct  com- 
pared unfavourably  with  that  of  the  Christians.    Then 


Why  Christianity  Appeals  to  the  Japanese  2  S3 

I  began  to  realize  that  the  God  of  the  Christians  must 
be  a  true  God.  So  I  read  what  my  son  sent  to  me  and 
came  out  into  Christianity."  No.  Seven  :  "  From  early 
childhood  I  had  no  use  for  reHgion.  Our  ideas  of  good 
and  evil  came  from  Confucianism.  That  was  good 
which  law  did  not  punish.  What  the  law  punished  was 
evil.  But  all  turned  on  whether  the  law  found  you  out 
or  not.  This  seemed  to  me  unjust.  Yet  my  ideas 
were  indefinite.  I  was  a  student  in  the  Yamaguchi 
Normal  School.  In  our  magazines  were  articles  on 
Christianity  and  in  praise  of  Christian  schools.  These 
interested  me  and  one  Sunday  I  went  to  see  the  wife  of 
the  postmaster,  who  knew  something  about  Christian- 
ity, and  asked  her  what  its  characteristic  features  were. 
She  told  me,  *  Love  your  enemies.'  This  startled  me, 
but  I  learned  little  more  and  left  school  with  little  in- 
terest in  life.  I  learned  more  from  a  friend  of 
my  father's.  Then  I  ran  away  from  home  to  escape 
persecution  and  a  marriage  I  disliked,  but  all  is  right 
now."  No.  Eight :  "  I  was  an  orphan  and  my  Bud- 
dhist and  Shintoist  relations  taught  me  from  the  begin- 
ning that  having  no  parents  to  provide  for  me,  all  my 
hope  was  in  the  gods.  So  I  was  made  to  be  devout  to- 
ward idols  from  infancy,  but  there  was  none  of  my 
heart  in  it.  Then  my  cousin  became  a  Christian  and 
tried  to  persuade  me,  but  1  did  not  change.  1  went  to 
a  woman's  meeting  taught  by  a  missionary,  where  we 
did  fancy  work.  There  I  heard  of  a  true  God.  I  had 
been  taught  that  there  were  many  gods  and  I  could  not 
think  there  was  but  one.  Bqt  .one  night  my  cousin 
and  I  were  going  horhe  together  and  he  showed  me  the 
stars  and  their  reflection  in  the  water  and  tried  to  per- 
suade me  that  one  God  must  have  made  all  the  beauty 
of  the  heavens.  I  felt  the  truth  of  this  and  went  on 
from  it  to  Christ  and  His  salvation.     I  saw  that  men's 


354       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

hearts  were  evil  and  needed  God's  salvation  from 
without  rather  than  Buddha's  from  within.  And  this 
salvation  was  in  the  God  come  down  into  flesh." 

There  are  deeply  suggestive  lessons  here  for  those 
who  can  read  between  the  Hnes.  But  all  that  such 
stories  mean  can  be  understood  only  by  those  who, 
working  among  these  people,  have  watched  the  struggle 
of  soul  and  mind  through  which  they  have  passed 
and  know  the  meaning  of  each  step  of  the  struggle. 
"  Humph !  "  says  the  old  German  forest  commissioner 
profoundly  in  "  In  the  Rukh,"  "  I  work  miracles,  und 
dey  come  off."  But  the  miracles  of  the  jungle  and  the 
forest  are  as  nothing  compared  with  the  miracles  of 
transformation  of  character  and  spirit  and  being  in 
which  the  diverse  operations  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
manifest  themselves  under  the  eyes  of  the  missionary. 
The  miracles  of  the  twentieth  century  stand  ever  before 
him  as  vindication  of  the  miracles  of  the  first. 


o 


XXVIII 


SHOSABURO  AOYAMA,  A   JAPANESE    CHRISTIAN 
GENTLEMAN 

THE  rain  was  falling  in  torrents  as  our  com- 
fortable little  ship,  the  Satsuma  Maru,  came 
to  anchor  off  Shimonoseki,  in  the  straits  where 
the  Inland  Sea  of  Japan  meets  the  waters  of 
the  Eastern,  the  Yellow,  and  the  Japan  Seas  in  the 
Korea  Strait.  A  large  covered  sampan  came  out  to 
meet  us,  and  we  clambered  over  the  ship's  side  in  the 
rain  and  tumbled  in,  creeping  at  once  into  the  covered 
end  of  the  shoe-shaped  boat,  out  of  the  wet.  Laughing- 
faces  peered  out  from  the  clean  little  wooden  houses 
as  we  jumped  ashore,  and  splashed  through  the  water 
to  an  inn.  A  most  sweet  and  tasteful  little  inn  it  was, 
and  the  proprietor,  an  elder  in  the  Christian  Church  in 
Shimonoseki,  welcomed  us  most  warmly  as  we  took 
off  our  shoes  and  climbed  up  the  tiny  stairs  to  a  dainty 
room.  And  there  we  met  Aoyama.  A  very  courtly  old 
gentleman  he  was.  In  the  old  feudal  days  of  Japan  he 
had  been  a  warrior  retainer  of  the  Lord  of  Okazaki, 
and  his  manners  were  as  gentle  and  polished  as  though 
he  had  been  of  knightly  birth.  Only  he  was  a  Japanese, 
of  course,  and  his  ways  were  Japanese  ways. 

As  the  rain  beat  upon  the  little  inn,  and  made  music 
against  the  panes  (for  it  had  windows  of  glass,  and 
not  of  paper,  as  in  most  Japanese  houses),  and  nearly 
hid  from  sight  the  Satsuma  Marti,  as  she  weighed 
anchor  and  went  on  to  Kobe,  Aoyama  told  us  how, 
thirty  years  before,  he  had  gone  to  a  gun  store  to  de- 
bate with  some  companions,  and  to  prove  to  them  that 
Western  guns   were   inferior   to   the  old   two-handed 

355 


2S^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

swords  of  Japan,  and  was  worsted  in  the  debate.  Con- 
vinced, then,  of  the  superiority  of  Western  things, 
he  went  on  to  study  Christianity,  and,  finding  Christ 
and  loving  Him,  had  become  His  servant  and  soldier, 
and  for  nineteen  years  had  been  preaching  His  gospel. 
It  was  a  sweet  story,  and  profitable,  and  as  nearly  all 
the  history  of  Japan  for  fifty  years  is  illustrated  in  it, 
I  want  to  tell  it  here  as  Aoyama  told  it  to  us,  sitting 
beside  the  haibaichi,  or  brazier,  with  the  elder,  who 
owned  the  inn  near  by,  and  with  the  kakemonos  on  the 
w^all  behind  him.  Afterward  he  wrote  it  out,  though 
with  hesitation,  because  he  was  unworthy,  he  felt,  and 
needing  not  to  speak  of  himself,  but  to  seek  the  mercy 
of  Christ.    And  this  was  his  story : 

I  was  born  January  4,  1843,  ^t  Okazaki,  a  city  in 
the  province  of  Mikawa.  My  father's  name  was 
Mokuemon  Yamaji,  and  my  mother's  Tayo  Yamaji. 
From  generation  to  generation  our  family  served  the 
feudal  lord  (of  Okazaki),  and  my  father  for  a  long 
time  acted  as  his  deputy.  I  was  the  youngest  of 
seven  sons.  When  I  was  eleven  years  of  age  a  rela- 
tive named  Aoyama,  who  had  no  son  of  his  own, 
adopted  me,  and  I  took  his  name.  According  to  the 
custom  of  that  time,  I  devoted  myself  diligently,  day 
and  night,  to  the  study  of  literature  (Chinese  and 
Japanese),  and  military  art.  Being  naturally  dull, 
however,  my  progress  w^as  very  slow.  Every  night 
my  mother,  while  occupied  with  her  household  duties, 
required  me  to  read  a  primary  history,  and  herself 
told  mc  about  the  heroes  of  ancient  and  modern  Japan, 
and  taught  me  the  duties  of  a  warrior  (samurai),  and 
endeavoured  to  cultivate  in  mc  strength  of  will.  Al- 
though adopted  by  the  Aoyama  family,  and  often  vis- 
iting them.  I  continued  to  reside  with  my  father  and 
mother  until  I  was  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  age. 

When  Commodore  Perry  came  to  Japan  I  was 
about  ten  years  of  age.  His  coming  awakened  the 
country  as  from  sleep.     For  more  than  two  hundred 


Shosaburo  Aoyama,  a  Japanese  Christian    357 

years  there  had  been  a  period  of  peace,  but  now  the 
weapons,  which  had  long;  laid  hidden  away  in  boxes, 
were  brought  forth,  and  there  was  a  revival  in  the 
study  of  military  art.  There  was  likewise  a  revival 
in  letters,  and  Chinese  literature  became  very  popular ; 
but  my  inclinations  were  not  toward  literature,  for  I 
wished  to  serve  my  lord  as  a  soldier.  I  became  pro- 
ficient, excelling'  especially  in  the  use  of  the  s]X'ar  and 
in  artillery  practise.  At  the  age  of  twenty,  however, 
the  new  methods  of  foreign  gunnery  were  introduced, 
nnich  to  my  dissatisfaction  (for  I  held  to  the  old), 
and  I  remonstrated  with  my  superiors.  They,  how- 
ever, explained  the  shortcomings  of  our  own  and  the 
merits  of  the  new,  and  told  me  also  about  the  real 
condition  of  foreign  countries.  I  was  greatly  inter- 
ested, and  from  that  time  became  a  zealous  student 
of  foreign  gunnery.  I  also  devoted  myself  to  the 
study  of  foreign  science,  and,  among  other  books. 
Natural  History  and  Elementary  Physiology,  written 
by  Mr.  Howson,  a  missionary  to  China,  were  of 
great  benefit  to  me.  At  the  end  of  these  books 
there  was  an  account  given  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the 
wisdom  and  power  of  the  Creator  was  described. 
This  I  read  repeatedly.  It  was  easy  to  understand 
about  the  Creator,  but  I  couldn't  understand  the  least 
bit  about  Jesus  Christ.  At  this  time  the  feeling 
against  foreigners  was  intense,  and  the  principal  sub- 
ject of  discussion  was  the  driving  of  them  away,  and 
the  closing  against  them  of  our  harbours ;  and  hence 
even  those  who  read  such  books  as  I  did  were  perse- 
cuted. But  the  current  of  events  was  too  strong  for 
the  conservatives.  Civil  war  was  breaking  out.  I 
was  then  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  years  old.  The 
ancient  weapons  of  Japan  quickly  proved  inferior  to 
the  better  foreign  weapons,  and  wonderful  changes 
began  to  work  in  everything.  At  that  time  I  was  sent 
to  Kyoto,  as  a  military  officer,  to  arrange  for  sending 
forward  artillery  in  the  war  with  Choshu  (Yamagu- 
chi).  While  I  was  staying  there  I  was  promoted  to 
the  position  of  diplomatic  oflficer  (in  dealing  with 
other  feudal  lords).  I  thus  had  an  opportunity  to  in- 
crease my  knowledge  greatly,  for  I  met  many  famous 


2S^        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

military  loaders,  and  visited  the  domains  of  other 
feudal  lords.  Heretofore  I  had  spent  my  whole  life 
in  Okazaki,  and  my  knowledi^^e  of  other  parts  of  Japan 
was  quite  limited ;  but  now  1  came  to  understand  the 
condition  of  the  country  as  a  whole.  At  that  time  the 
situation  changed  rapidly,  and  battles  being  fought  at 
Kyoto  and  Fushimi,  the  shogun  was  overthrown,  and 
the  mikado  was  restored  to  power.  Meantime  I  had 
been  cast  into  prison  for  opposing  the  government,  and 
there  I  remained  until  the  war  of  the  restoration  was 
ended.*  While  I  was  staying  in  prison  I  pondered 
deeply  over  the  question  as  to  whether  it  was  possible 
to  harmonize  Confucianism  with  foreign  science,  so 
that  both  could  dwell  together  in  the  land.  But  the 
course  of  events  was  so  rapid  that  it  seemed  that  not 
one  old  thing  was  going  to  be  left,  and  I  searched  in 
vain  for  some  foundation  principle  that  might  serve  as 
a  guide  for  the  mind  of  the  new  Japan.  I  thought  that 
possibly,  in  the  systems  of  foreign  countries,  there 
might  be  something  similar  to  Confucianism,  but  I 
couldn't  find  anything. 

In  August,  1867,  I  was  released  from  prison,  but 
my  troubles  were  not  over.  I  had  had  much  trouble 
from  my  childhood ;  trouble  in  connection  with  being 
adopted  into  another  family ;  trouble  inherited  from 
the  new  house  into  which  I  had  entered.  Then,  when 
I  was  cast  into  prison,  my  allowance  was  reduced,  and 
when  released  I  was  in  great  poverty.!  In  1868,  how- 
ever, the  old  officials  were  all  dismissed,  and  those  who, 
like  myself,  had  been  in  prison,  came  into  power;  so  the 
despised  theorists  became  the  high  ofiicials.  The  gov- 
ernment in  my  feudal  lord's  domain  was  now  exactly 
to  my  fancy,  and  I  considered  that  the  time  had  come 
when  I  could  put  into  practice  the  new  knowledge 
which  I  had  gathered.     But  much  disappointment  was 

*  The  feudal  lord  of  Okazaki  was  a  supporter  of  the  shogun, 
but  Aoyama  evidently  sympathized  with  the  mikado,  and  hence 
was  cast  into  prison  by  his  feudal  lord,  and  kept  there  until 
the  triumph  of  the  mikado's  sympathizers  compelled  the  re- 
lease of  all  such  prisoners. 

+  Samurai  received  an  annual  allowance  of  so  many  koku 
of  rice  from  their  feudal  lords. 


Shosaburo  Aoyarm,  a  Japanese  Christian    359 

the  result  for  the  most  part.  Just  at  this  time  there 
was  pubHshed  the  translation  of  a  book  called  Sclf- 
Help,  by  Smiles.  In  this  book  there  was  written 
much  about  missionaries,  and  the  deeds  of  heroes, 
which  I  greatly  admired.  I  read  it  several  times, 
searching-  especially  for  the  fundamentally  different 
point  of  view  which  evidently  distinguished  the  West 
from  the  ]£ast.  At  this  time  I  was  commanded  to 
lead  back  to  Okazaki  the  samurai  who  were  gathered 
at  the  residence  of  my  lord  in  Yeddo.  This  gave  me 
my  first  opportunity  to  visit  Yokohama,  meet  foreign- 
ers, and  utter  freely  my  inmost  feelings.  Then  it  was 
that  I  was  told  that  Christianity  is  the  foundation  of 
Western  civilization.  With  that  began  my  desire  to 
study  Christianity.  The  national  law,  however,  still 
prohibited,  under  the  severest  penalties,  any  such 
study,  and  as  there  were  no  books,  I  could  not  do  any- 
thing. Nevertheless,  I  fairly  hungered  and  thirsted* 
with  my  desire.  It  happened,  then,  that  one  of  my 
friends,  who  had  been  to  America  and  Europe,  re- 
turned. He  had  with  him  a  Chinese  translation  of 
the  New  Testament,  and  he  showed  it  to  me.  Then 
I  told  him  what  I  wished  to  do,  and  my  desire  to 
possess  the  book,  whereupon  he  gave  it  to  me  with 
pleasure.  I  was  delighted,  and  read  it  many  times, 
day  and  night.  But  the  principle  of  it  was  entirely 
beyond  my  understanding,  and  I  felt  very  foolish  be- 
cause I  could  not  understand  it,  and  many  times  I 
cast  it  aside ;  but  always  took  it  up  again.  As  I  think 
of  it  now  it  seems  like  a  dream.  The  cross  of  Christ 
was  a  special  stumbling-block  to  me,  and  as  a  soldier 
I  was  greatly  dissatisfied  with  the  timidity  of  the  dis- 
ciples. I  continued  to  read  the  book  over  and  over 
again  for  four  years,  and  gained  no  light.  I  wanted 
to  read  the  Old  Testament  also,  but  could  not  get  one. 
In  1871  the  Daimyates  were  abolished,  and  the 
present  system  of  Prefectures  was  established.*  Most 
of  my  friends  got  government  positions,  and  went 
away,  and  it  was  necessary  for  me  to  find  something 
to  do,  so  I  decided  to  go  to  Tokyo  with  my  family. 
It  was  now  the  summer  of  1874.     It  was  at  this  time 

♦This  deprived   most  of  the  samurai  of  their  support. 


360       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

that  I  tried  to  pray  to  God  secretly.  I  read  books  on 
the  evidences  of  Christianity,  and  the  like,  and  I 
beg^an  to  venerate  God.  My  main  purpose  in  goinj^ 
to  Tokyo  was  to  obtain  a  chance  of  studying-  the  Bible, 
and,  as  I  already  had  three  children,  to  give  them  an 
opportunity  of  being  educated  in  the  new  knowledge, 
and  to  bring  my  whole  family  under  the  inlluence  of 
the  new  religion.  When  I  first  came  to  Tokyo  T  was 
introduced  to  Dr.  Thompson  *  by  the  same  friend  who 
first  gave  me  the  New  Testament.  I  told  to  him  my 
hopes,  and  expressed  the  desire  to  become  his  pupil. 
He  treated  me  with  great  kindness.  After  that, 
every  day,  in  company  with  four  or  five  friends,  I 
studied  the  Old  Testament  at  his  house.  On  Sun- 
day I  went  to  church  with  my  family,  and  studied 
the  Gospels  of  Luke  and  John  with  Dr.  Verbeck. 
I  felt  I  was  beginning  to  understand  their  mean- 
ing, which  is  that  Christ,  with  a  nature  that  is 
both  human  and  divine,  is  our  great  Saviour.  I  soon 
asked  to  be  baptized,  and  was  baptized  by  Dr.  Thomp- 
son. My  old  friend  sought  to  persuade  me  to  get 
employment  with  the  government,  but  Dr.  Thompson 
told  me  it  would  be  a  difficult  thing  for  me  to  keep 
the  Sabbath  holy,  and,  if  possible,  it  would  be  better 
to  seek  some  other  livelihood.  As  my  allowance  as 
a  samurai  was  still  coming  to  me  as  before,  I  was 
able  to  get  on  without  trouble.  I  taught  Japanese  to 
Miss  Schoolmaker,  and  afterwards  to  Dr.  Imbrie  and 
Miss  Youngman.  While  doing  this  I  studied  the 
Bible,  and  began  to  tell  others  about  the  way  to  believe 
in  Christ.  In  1876  the  theological  school  was  estab- 
lished, and  I  studied  there  for  over  two  years,  greatly 
to  my  benefit.  I  was  shamefully  slow  in  my  spiritual 
development ;  I  found  it  hard  to  believe  in  miracles ; 
I  thought  that  God  was  not  above  the  reason,  and, 
indeed,  that  God  and  reason  were  almost  the  same 
thing.  But  I  did  not  wholly  reject  miracles — I  looked 
upon  them  as  historical  events,  and  waited  for  clear 
evidence  that  would  allow  me  to  believe  wholly.  But 
in  the  unknown  time  the  Holy  Spirit  was  sent.     I  had 

*  The   Rev.    David    Thompson,    D.D.,    of   the    Presbyterian 
Mission,  who  went  to  Japan  in  1863. 


Shosaburo  Aoyama,  a  Japanese  Christian    361 

a  great  strug-gle,  too,  with  my  old  habits.  We  began 
family  prayers.  The  children  grew  in  knowledge. 
My  own  weakness,  and  the  power  of  old  habits,  were 
revealed  to  me  continuously,  night  and  day;  nor  had 
I  any  power  to  overcome  them — any  power  of  my  own. 
I  was  in  great  distress,  and  could  only  exclaim,  "  O, 
wretched  man  that  I  am !  "  As  I  look  back  to  that 
period  I  feel  it  to  have  been  the  period  of  my  greatest 
suffering.  Though  I  believed  in  Christ,  I  did  not  re- 
ceive His  full  light,  I  saw  the  dim  light  in  the  far  dis- 
tance ;  though  I  was  reformed,  I  sometimes  felt  hyp- 
ocritical, yet  I  believed  that  God  would  surely  help 
me. 

For  five  years  after  I  was  baptized  I  preached  the 
gospel  within  and  without  the  city  of  Tokyo.  In  the 
spring  of  1878  I  was  told  that  Shimonoseki  was  to  be 
made  an  open  port.  It  was,  therefore,  my  desire  to 
begin  to  preach  the  gospel  in  that  place,  and  with  my 
friend,  Mr.  S.  Hattori,  I  pledged  myself  to  that  work, 
and  in  April  of  that  year  we  proceeded  to  that  place. 
As  soon  as  we  began  to  preach  there  arose  a  bitter  per- 
secution, and  we  had  no  place  in  which  even  to  stay. 
But  in  the  midst  of  the  persecution,  and  in  a  short 
time,  many  became  Christians;  and  at  various  places 
around  there  were  inquirers,  so  that,  on  Christmas, 
1879,  we  were  able  to  organize  a  church.  Mr.  Hat- 
tori  then  went  to  Yamaguchi,  and  Mr.  Nakashima 
coming  to  the  field,  the  gospel  was  preached  in  Hiro- 
shima, Yanagawa,  and  Kokura.  As  I  had  been  or- 
dained before  leaving  Tokyo,  I  went  about  from  place 
to  place  baptizing  the  converts.  In  the  spring  of 
1 88 1  there  was  a  revival  in  Tokyo  and  Yokohama,  and 
some  Christians  coming  from  there,  we  held  meetings 
night  and  day.  I  also  received  the  blessing  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  from  that  time  I  was  full  of  grati- 
tude. 

In  the  spring  of  1883  my  wife,  who  had  been  bed- 
ridden for  five  years,  died,  leaving  six  children,  so 
that  both  within  and  without  my  household  I  was 
made  to  suffer ;  but  the  Lord  made  it  all  work  out  for 
my  spiritual  good ;  and  led  me  in  the  true  way.  After- 
ward I  became  the  pastor  of  the  Yamaguchi  church, 


362        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  at  that  time  there  was  an  attack  of  the  new  the- 
oloi^y,  and  it  seemed  as  though  the  churches  in  this 
region,  and  myself  as  well,  would  be  overwhelmed ; 
but  we  withstood  it,  and  made  firm  the  foundations. 
It  was  a  great  benefit  to  my  faith,  but  there  were 
many  among  the  Christians  who  never  recovered. 

I  have  spent  nineteen  years  working  in  this  region 
— eleven  years  at  Shimonoseki  and  at  Chofu,  three 
years  at  Yamaguchi,  one  year  at  Yanagawa  (Kyushu), 
and  four  years  in  Usuki  (Kyushu).  During  that  time 
I  have  enjoyed  the  sympathy  of  Dr.  Alexander,*  and 
he  has  done  many  favours  to  my  family.  I  have  had 
twelve  children — by  my  first  wife,  seven,  and  by  my 
second,  five.  By  the  grace  of  God  ten  are  still  living. 
The  eldest  son  was  graduated  at  McCormick  Theolog- 
ical Seminary,  and  is  devoting  his  life  to  the  gospel 
nninistry.  I  rejoice  in  this.  Dr.  Alexander  was  a 
great  help  to  him.  I  rejoice,  too,  in  the  fact  that  my 
eldest  daughter  is  the  wife  of  a  pastor. 

As  I  look  back  over  my  life  I  feel  that  I  was  chosen 
by  the  will  of  God,  redeemed  and  consecrated  by  the 
precious  blood  of  the  Lord,  and  was  made  a  servant 
and  preacher  of  the  Word.  My  joy  in  serving  the 
Lord  without  fear  is  changed  into  overflowing  grati- 
tude. I  am  not  looking  back ;  but,  keeping  my  eyes 
in  front,  I  press  toward  the  goal. 

It  is  plain  that  wonderful  changes  have  taken  place 
in  Japan  since  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  but  the 
changes  are  so  various,  and  the  causes  so  mixed,  that 
it  is  hard  to  say  that  Christianity  is  the  sole  cause. 
Nevertheless,  that  it  was  a  most  important  cause,  all 
must  admit.  Of  course,  for  the  most  part.  Eastern 
customs  are  sprung  from  Confucianism  and  Bud- 
dhism ;  such,  for  example,  as  the  honouring  of  men  and 
despising  of  women,  and  the  division  of  society  into 
ranks.  But  evil  customs  in  Japan  are  being  grad- 
ually rooted  out.  If  it  is  asked  why  Japanese  break 
with  old  customs  so  readily,  the  answer  is,  that  the\' 
realize  that  this  must  be  done  if  Japan  wishes  to  rival 

*  The  Rev.  T.  T.  Alexander,  D.D.,  of  the  Presbyterian  Mis- 
sion. 


Shosaburo  Aoyama,  a  Japanese  Christian    2^3 

civilized  countries  of  the  West.  Feudal  government 
has  been  abolished,  and  constitutional  government  es- 
tablished in  its  place  with  good  effect.  In  the  homes 
of  the  people  the  rank  of  women  and  the  relations  of 
man  and  woman  are  improving.  It  is  impossible  that 
educated  women  should  be  treated  with  contempt. 
There  are  two  things,  however,  which  are  not  yet  es- 
tablished— first,  the  destruction  of  the  customs  char- 
acteristic of  people  of  high  rank ;  and  second,  higher 
education  among  the  women  generally.  But  it  is  clear 
that  these  will  gradually  improve.  Thus  the  people 
are  coming  to  look  upon  these  various  changes  as  evi- 
dence that  Confucianism  and  Buddhism  are  losing 
their  power.  The  new  wine  will  not  be  put  into  the 
old  bottles.  The  old  house  has  to  be  broken  up  in 
order  to  build  a  new  one.  If  we  wish  to  associate 
with  foreign  peoples  on  terms  of  equality,  our  customs 
must  be  made  to  conform  to  theirs.  Now,  if  the  many 
changes  be  examined  carefully,  and  traced  to  their 
source,  it  will  be  seen  that  they  all  sprang  from  ideas 
revealed  in  the  Bible.  So  the  people  in  our  country 
must  come  to  Christianity  in  the  end.  Many  among 
the  learned  men,  the  statesmen,  and  the  business  men, 
often  confess  this.  These  people,  however,  are  in  no 
haste  or  anxiety  for  their  own  salvation;  they  favour 
their  wives  and  children  becoming  Christians,  and  the 
country  as  a  whole  becoming  Christian.  Thus  Chris- 
tianity has  been  preached  among  the  Gentiles,  and  they 
believed.  One  is  surprised,  therefore,  at  the  smallness 
of  the  Church ;  but  there  are  reasons,  both  within  and 
without,  for  this  state.  Within  the  Church  they  still 
depend  too  much  on  the  reason  and  knowledge  of 
men,  and  not  on  the  power  of  God ;  and  the  poison  of 
the  new  theology  is  still  at  work.  There  are  other 
causes,  which  I  will  not  mention,  but  I  believe  in  the 
final  victory  of  the  cross.  I  pray  especially  for  the 
outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit  upon  the  churches  of 
this  land. 

Please  pardon  the  confusion  of  ideas,  and  the  brevity 
of  this  sketch  of  my  life. 

Shosaburo  Aoyama. 


364        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Let  us  join  good  Aoyama  in  his  prayer.  When,  later 
in  the  day,  we  said  good-by  to  him,  as  we  went  aboard 
a  tiny  coasting  ship  for  Mitajiri,  it  was  with  that  sense 
of  enrichment  and  satisfaction  which  comes  from  hav- 
ing met  a  good  and  gentle  man.  It  is  a  good  thing  to 
have  part  in  a  work  which  produces  such  results. 


XXIX 

FOUR  LIFE  STORIES 

THE  Church  of  Christ  which  is  growing  up  in 
Persia  is  composed  of  diverse  elements.  Mo- 
hammedans, Nestorians,  Armenians,  and  Jews 
make  up  the  population  of  the  country  and 
the  membership  of  the  Church.  But  in  the  state  the 
seven  and  one-half  millions  of  the  Mohammedans 
dominate  severely  the  twenty-five  thousand  Nestorians, 
the  forty-five  thousand  Armenians,  and  the  twenty 
thousand  Jews,  who  made  up  the  non-Moslem  popula- 
tion until  the  massacres  in  Turkey  drove  down  tens 
of  thousands  of  both  Armenian  and  Nestorian  refugees 
to  increase  these  numbers,  and  find  shelter  under  the 
more  tolerant  government  of  the  Shiah  Kajars.  In 
the  Church,  naturally,  the  predominant  element  still  is 
from  the  Gregorian  and  Nestorian  Churches,  which 
have  maintained  the  Christian  name,  and  the  forms,  at 
least,  of  a  Christian  faith,  under  twelve  centuries  of 
Moslem  oppression.  Each  of  these  four  peoples,  how- 
ever, has  its  first  fruits  in  the  little  Church  of  which 
at  least  as  much  can  be  said  as  was  written  to  the 
church  in  Philadelphia  :  "  Thou  hast  a  little  power,  and 
didst  keep  my  word,  and  didst  not  deny  my  name." 

Desirous  of  seeing  how  men  of  these  different  races 
came  into  the  society  of  Christ,  when  in  Persia  I  asked 
four  representative  types  to  tell  their  stories.  The  first 
was  a  converted  Moslem  gentleman  in  Tabriz,  attached 
to  the  suite  of  a  prominent  nobleman,  who,  though  a 
Mohammedan,  protected  his  Christian  friend  from  per- 
secution. He  had  left  Islam  for  Sufism,  but  its  petty 
laws  brought  yet  greater  unease  and  burden  upon  him. 

365 


266       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

He  was  taught,  for  example,  that,  if  a  man  carried  an 
ant  on  his  person  from  one  section  of  the  city  to  an- 
other, he  should  take  it  back,  and  deposit  it  where  he 
found  it.  From  Sufism  he  turned  to  Babism,  but  the 
Bab,  he  said,  had  been  a  dissolute  and  drunken  young 
man,  and  wrote  ungrammatically.  He  could  not  be- 
lieve that  the  Bab  was  God. 

After  that,  this  was  his  story :  "  A  statement  of  the 
way  I  found  the  mercy  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  escaped 
from  the  bonds  of  the  law,  and  from  the  heavy  load 
which  I  have  borne.  For  a  long  time  I  gave  myself  to 
eating,  sleeping,  and  frivolity,  and  had  no  portion  in 
the  spiritual  life.  Little  by  little  I  came  to  this  thought 
that,  of  necessity,  from  the  beginning  of  creation  to  the 
last  day,  there  must  be  a  person  pure  and  holy,  without 
sin,  and  full  of  kindness,  a  Mediator  between  the  Cre- 
ator and  his  creatures,  to  free  all  the  creatures  from 
sin  and  uncleanness.  With  this  thought,  I  began  to 
read  the  books  of  the  teachers  of  my  native  city.  I 
could  not  find  the  Mediator.  On  a  certain  day  it  hap- 
pened that  I  was  at  the  house  of  a  friend,  and  saw  a 
copy  of  the  Old  Testament.  I  read  in  it,  and  found 
wonderful  and  heart-pleasing  things.  I  borrowed  the 
book,  asking  whence  it  had  come.  My  friend  said  that 
about  forty-five  years  ago  an  Englishman  had  trans- 
lated it.  I  took  it  home,  and  read  it  continuously,  and 
sought  also  the  New  Testament.  My  heart  was  drawn 
to  the  words  of  these  books,  and  I  obtained  some  com- 
fort, but  not  to  my  heart's  desire.  And  I  cried  and 
prayed,  '  O  God,  lead  me  to  the  road  which  is  straight, 
and  in  which  Thy  pleasure  is.' 

"  Then,  on  a  certain  night,  I  dreamed  that  I  was  in 
a  ruined  city,  where  there  was  no  living  thing,  and 
it  was  unutterably  dark.  I  was  afraid,  and  speech- 
less.    Wherever  I  turned  I  sank  to  my  waist  in  mire. 


Four  Life  Stones  367 

I  saw  myself  near  to  destruction,  and  began  to  weep.  I 
continued  to  say,  '  O  God,  by  Thine  own  dear  honour 
free  me  from  this.'  Then  I  heard  a  voice  from  heaven, 
the  speaker  being  invisible,  which  said :  'If  thou 
wouldst  be  deHvered  from  this  city  of  destruction,  thou 
must  believe  on  Jesus,  else  thou  must  stay  here  till  the 
judgment  day.'  Thrice  I  heard  this  voice  in  the  same 
way.  Then  I  said,  *  I  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus,  O 
God.'  The  voice  replied,  '  Art  thou  firm  in  thy  con- 
fession ? '  And  I  answered  '  Yes.'  Immediately  that 
city  of  destruction  became  as  heaven,  and  now  I  am 
unable  to  describe  its  beauty.  After  that,  I  awoke  from 
my  sleep,  and  said  I  must  see  the  teachers  of  these 
books.  I  saw  my  remedy  in  this.  There  were  a  few 
people  from  America  in  Tabriz,  and  I  sought  them,  and 
they  became  my  leaders  in  the  road  which  I  travel. 
After  many  temptations,  I  received  baptism,  and  by  the 
mercy  of  the  great  One,  I  have  remained  near  Him 
until  this  day,  being  of  the  number  of  the  followers 
of  the  Lord  Jesus,  who  said,  '  Him  that  cometh  to  Me, 
I  will  in  no  wise  cast  out.'  I  hope  to  my  last  breath 
to  remain  in  the  love  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  to  be  of 
firm  step  in  the  day  of  judgment  before  the  Father  and 
the  Son,  and  that  I  shall  not  have  a  black  face  (be 
ashamed),  and  be  cast  out  of  heaven.  During  life  I 
praise  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost." 

This  was  the  Armenian's  story.  He  knew  English 
in  his  way,  and  I  preserve  his  own  words :  "  When 
I  was  a  little  boy  of  nine  years,  I  went  to  the  mission 
school  in  our  village  of  Ichmeh,  about  six  miles  from 
Harput.  The  teacher  was  a  man  of  lovely  life,  and  his 
example  greatly  influenced  me.  After  I  met  him,  I 
had  the  feeling  that  I  was  going  to  be  a  preacher,  and 
devoted  to  Christ's  work.  At  the  close  of  school,  we 
would  sing  and  pray  before  going  home.     Once  we 


368       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sang  '  I  want  to  be  an  angel,'  and  when  wc  came  to  the 
verse,  '  I  am  a  sinful  boy,  but  the  Lord  will  forgive,' 
I  felt  something  I  had  not  felt  before,  and  the  tears 
began  to  flow  from  my  eyes,  and  I  began  to  have  a 
different  life.  Then  the  children  mocked  me,  but  I 
felt  sure  strength  to  be  strong  during  all  the  time.  I 
did  not  join  the  church.  I  was  careful  about  it,  think- 
ing I  must  be  perfect  first.  When  I  was  eleven  I  used 
to  read  in  the  winter  to  my  father  and  uncles.  When 
I  read  the  stories  of  Joseph  and  Samuel  and  David, 
they  would  ask  questions  and  object. 

"  While  they  were  making  questions,  my  father  be- 
gan to  come  to  meetmgs.  My  mother  was  friendly 
with  the  teacher,  and  this  helped  me.  So,  soon,  my 
father  wanted  to  join  the  church,  and  my  brother  was 
ordained  deacon,  while  my  father  undertook  financial 
responsibility  for  accounts  of  church  and  school.  In 
these  troublous  days  I  am  remembering  that  it  was  very 
pleasant  every  morning  and  evening  to  gather  our 
large  family  together  for  family  prayers.  Brothers 
and  uncle  would  conduct  them,  but  we  all  took  part. 

"  My  father  built  a  new  church, — not  a  fine  one,  but 
simple  and  good.  He  was  a  well-known  man,  and 
the  Bishop  wrote  to  him  to  drop  his  evangelical  re- 
ligion, that  it  was  a  shame  to  him.  *  Come  and  sec,'  he 
replied :  '  you  will  find  you  are  mistaken.'  He  gave  his 
tithes,  and  decided  he  should  give  two  tithes  of  his  chil- 
dren. So  I  became  teacher,  and  then  I  worked  for 
young  men  in  Harput  plain,  and  became  a  preacher.  I 
have  tried  to  do  something  good.  The  Moslems 
troubled  us.  They  would  not  pay  my  father  their 
debts,  but  he  did  what  he  could  even  as  an  old  man.  I 
have  come  as  preacher  to  the  Armenians  in  Persia. 
They  do  not  hear  as  the  people  at  home  did.  I  love  to 
work  for  them  and  for  my  Master. 


Four  Life  Stones  369 

"  It  is  a  very  good  remembrance  when  I  think  of 
my  father  and  my  brother,  both  together.  Always 
they  were  working  in  the  same  Hne.  When  the  last 
disturbances  began,  the  first  attack  was  made  on  our 
village.  When  they  attacked,  they  cried,  '  Tell  the 
Moslem  creed  ! '  The  first  martyr  was  my  father.  Af- 
ter six  days  they  gathered  the  people  in  the  church,  and 
then  brought  them  out  and  killed  them  like  little  sheep, 
one  by  one,  as  they  rejected  Mohammed,  and  did  cleave 
to  Christ.  The  martyrs  were  thirty-two.  The  first 
who  came  out  was  the  pastor.  The  good  shepherd  did 
go  before  the  sheep.  When  they  brought  out  my  eldest 
brother,  he  had  some  discussion  with  the  sheikh.  But 
then  they  wounded  him,  and  he  fell  down.  Then  he 
held  up  his  head,  and  said,  '  My  name  was  Mardiros, 
but  now  I  am  dying  really  a  martyr.  O  Jesus,  accept 
my  soul ! '  "  But  of  what  avail  to  tell  again  the  story 
of  the  slain, 

"  Whose  souls  are  with  the  saints,  I  trust "  f 

The  quiet,  peaceful  voice  broke  here,  and  I  beheld  an- 
other of  the  blessings  given  to  those  who  know  "  the 
fellowship  of  His  sufferings." 

The  third  story  was  the  tale  of  a  Jew  which  he  wrote 
out  in  Persian.  This  is  the  translation  of  it :  "  Blessed 
be  God,  the  Lord  of  the  children  of  Israel,  who  looks 
upon  His  covenant  with  Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob, 
and  sent  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Redeemer  of  the 
nations,  that  whosoever  shall  trust  in  His  salvation  may 
have  life,  especially  according  to  His  covenant  with 
Israel.  He  will  leave  a  remnant  which  shall  believe  on 
Him,  and  become  the  inheritors  of  the  promises,  al- 
though they  were  but  dry  bones.  He  has  not  forgotten 
them.  Among  such,  your  servant,  who  in  his  youth 
heard  the  teachings  of  his  parents  and  teachers  to  the 


370       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

intent  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  not  the  promised  Sa- 
viour, and  that  his  miracles,  such  as  healing  the  blind 
and  raising  the  dead,  were  not  from  him,  but  from  His 
Name,  which  dwelt  in  the  temple,  as  is  taught  this  day 
among  the  Jews.  I  also  was  bitten  by  the  old  Serpent, 
and  walked  according  to  their  belief  that  the  mention  of 
the  name  of  Jesus  was  sin,  that  even  acquaintance 
with  Christians  was  transgression,  and  that  it  was  a 
work  of  merit  to  burn  or  otherwise  to  destroy  every 
book  relating  to  Christians.  This  was  until  I  was  able 
to  read  Hebrew  commentaries  and  books,  and  to  under- 
stand. 

"  Once  I  found  among  the  books  of  my  mother's 
father,  who  was  a  mollah,  some  copies  of  the  Gospel 
of  Luke  and  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  which  had 
been  presented  to  him.  I  found  some  tracts  also.  I 
took  all  these  home,  and  read  them.  Day  by  day  I 
saw  that  the  faith  of  Christ  was  different  from  what 
I  had  thought  it  to  be.  I  saw  that  the  teaching  of  the 
New  Testament  was  in  accord  with  the  covenant  with 
the  fathers,  and  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ  in  whom 
there  was  hope  and  salvation.  I  became  sorry  that 
many  had  been  out  of  the  way  and  asleep.  My  par- 
ents and  friends  became  anxious  about  me,  and  began 
to  oppose  me,  and  to  oppress.  They  gave  me  Jewish 
books,  and  said :  '  If  you  read  these  Christian  books 
further,  you  shall  be  put  in  the  government  prison, 
and  your  inheritance  will  be  taken  away.'  All  this 
was  as  a  fable  to  me.  The  inheritance  was  as  nothing 
to  the  love  of  Christ.  Then  they  wrote  a  paper  disin- 
heriting me,  and  my  father  gave  his  fortune,  which  was 
large,  to  my  brothers,  and  they  drove  me  out  from  my 
father's  house.  The  mollah  and  teachers  of  the  city 
began  to  talk  with  me,  to  dissuade  me.  I  praise  God 
that,  with  tlic  help  of  Christ.  I  was  able  to  answer  them. 


Four  Life  Stones  371 

Then  they  showed  enmity,  and  the  mollahs  and  muj- 
tahids  complained  to  the  governor,  and  I  was  bomid 
and  chained  several  times,  and  the  government  took 
much  money  from  me.  Once  the  brother  of  the  Shah 
wanted  to  cut  off  my  ears.  I  praise  the  Lord  that  till 
now  the  grace  of  our  Saviour  has  delivered  me  from 
all  these  dangers,  and  that  my  knowledge  of  his  salva- 
tion has  increased.  May  he  show  his  power  in  the 
peace  of  Christ  unto  the  tribes  of  Israel ! " 

With  the  fourth  life  story  I  became  acquainted  in 
the  city  of  Kermanshah.  A  young  man  and  his  mother 
were  at  work  there  for  God.  Beside  them  there  were 
two  other  Christians  in  the  city.  One  was  a  pale-faced 
young  Chaldean  priest  sent  out  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
missionaries  in  Mosul,  and  he  was  just  leaving  the 
place,  shaking  off  the  dust  of  his  feet  against  its  in- 
iquity. The  other  was  a  young  Moslem  convert,  not 
strong  enough  for  much  boldness  of  open  confession. 
But  the  young  man  and  his  mother  were  not  retreating, 
and  they  were  not  afraid.  For  Christ's  sake  they  had 
left  their  homes  in  Urumia,  and  come  as  missionaries 
to  the  Jews  and  Moslems  of  Kermanshah.  The  visits 
of  Christians  were  very  few,  and  they  received  us  as 
they  would  have  received  our  Master.  The  old  mother 
was  in  transports  of  delight,  and  would  rise  to  go  out 
now  and  then  to  weep  with  joy.  Her  son  knew  Per- 
sian, Turkish,  Syriac,  Arabic,  Hebrew,  Kurdish,  and 
some  English,  and  he  wrote  out  this  story,  which  I 
have  not  changed  even  as  to  the  spelling.  I  asked  him 
for  his  own  experience,  but  he  sank  it  in  his  mother's. 

THE    STORY    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    LIFE    OF    MY    MOTHER 

7.  Her  a^e. 

Now  she  is  an  old  woman  of  sixty  years  in  ago. 
So  feeble  and  weary  that  she  waits  every  day  to  reach 


2']i       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

on  her  Everlasting  Rest.     She  is  pleased  to  labour  for 
her  Lord  in  a  strange  country  in  her  old  days. 

//.  Her  life  with  her  Husband. 

She  lived  with  her  husband  forty  years.  But  he 
v^^as  a  drinkin  man.  At  once  he  went  to  other  Coun- 
try he  did  not  came  back  to  his  own  country  till  twelve 
years.  But  in  this  time  my  mother  was  in  a  poor  con- 
dition. But  in  pure  spiritual  life.  And  when  he  came 
back  to  his  home  he  was  a  drinkin  man  till  twinty 
six  years.  Then  my  mother  was  in  a  great  trouble  to 
see  him  a  drinkin  man  every  day  And  to  receive 
many  drinkin  guests  every  day.  Now  she  was  asking 
God  to  bring  her  some  blessed  days  in  which  she 
would  have  many  spiritual  guests  (Preachers)  to  min- 
ister them.  Now  I  see  that  God  had  heard  her  re- 
quest. 

At  last  she  lived  with  her  husband  in  Christian  life 
only  two  years.  It  was  blessed  years  but  alass  very 
short.  In  those  two  last  years  my  father  was  a  true 
Christian  man  indeed,     he  did  not  drink  wine  at  all. 

///.  Her  Rcpentence. 

Till  thirty  years  she  was  a  Nestorian  woman.  But 
after  that  she  received  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  her 
heart  by  hearing  preaching  of  Postur  Yohhanan 
Doomon.  about  the  story  of  Lazar,  Mary  and  Marta. 
From  that  time  she  began  to  pray,  to  give  her  heart 
to  her  Lord  and  to  try  to  work  for  him  as  much  as 
it  was  pussible  for  her. 

IV.  Her  desire  to  see  me  a  preacher. 

When  I  was  a  little  boy  only  seven  years  old  my 
mother  prayed  and  asked  God  to  make  me  a  preacher 
to  work  in  his  Ministry :  Then  she  sent  me  to  school 
though  she  had  no  money  to  spend.  Because  my 
father  was  a  drunkin  man  and  very  poor.  Then  she 
worked  hard  and  bought  the  books  wliich  I  was  need. 
Now  my  father  was  in  Rusia  till  I  became  twelve 
years  old.     When  he  came  back  to  his  home  he  tried 


Four  Life  Stories  373 

to  let  me  not  go  to  school.  But  he  could  not  Because 
we  could  not  obey  on  him.  Then  he  tried  to  send  me 
to  the  school  of  English-men.  But  that  too  it  was 
very  impossible  for  him.  Then  he  let  me  free  to  go 
to  my  school.  When  I  became  (20)  twenty  years 
old  I  was  fineshed  the  Thialigy  Course  in  Orumiah 
Collage.  Now  I  am  working  with  my  old  mother  in 
the  blessed  ministry  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  In 
the  city  of  Kermanshah.  My  mother  is  so  much 
pleased  to  see  me  preaching  as  she  asked  God  fifteen 
years  ago.  She  has  many  labours  indeed  for  Jesus 
sake  in  that  strange  Country  in  her  old  age  and  last 
days. 

V.  Our  journey  on  to  Kermanshah. 

One  day  I  asked  her,  "  Mother  are  you  ready  to 
go  to  another  place  and  work  to  God  ?  "  "  Yes  dear 
son  I  am  ready  to  go  every  where  that  God  calls  me." 
Then  I  told  her  "  Mother  we  must  go  on  to  Kerman- 
shah." "  Yes  I  am  glad  to  go  and  work  in  the  Blessed 
Ministry." 

In  that  day  which  we  were  all  ready  to  go  on  to  our 
journey,  We  received  a  letter  from  my  brother  which 
was  in  Badkuba  stranger  for  twinty  years.  He  was 
writhin  that  I  will  meet  you  in  Orumiah  after  one 
month.  Now  my  mother  had  a  great  trouble,  She 
did  not  knew  what  to  do?  To  come  with  me  onto 
Kermanshah?  Or  to  stay  in  home  to  see  her  dear 
son,  which  she  had  saw  him  not  for  twinty  years? 
After  some  prayers,  She  said  I  will  go  onto  Kerman- 
shah, for  Jesus  sake. 

For  all  days  which  we  were  traviling  My  old  mother 
was  praying,  and  asking  God  to  proteckt  and  save  us 
from  all  kinds  of  dangers. 

God  heard  her  and  saved  us. 

We  traveled  two  days  through  largest,  and  highest 
mountains  when  we  did  reach  to  a  little  village  in  a 
vally  My  mother  said  "  dear  son  now  we  have  gone 
out  to  another  world."  Then  we  laughed  a  little  and 
answered  her  that  when  we  are  traveling  onto  Heaven 
we  must  pass  through  many  highest  Mountains. 

Now  we  are  in  Kermanshah. 


374       Missionary  l^inciples  and  Practice 

My  mother  spcakes  with  Kaklanian  Jews  and  Mus- 
lim women.  And  they  are  pleased  to  hear  from  her 
the  Word  of  God. 

I  hope  all  brothercn  and  sisteren  will  remember  us 
in  their  prayers. 

There  is  something  idyllic  in  this  last  story,  as  there 
is  the  fragrance  of  the  early  days  of  Christianity  about 
all  of  them.  But  they  are  gracious  tales  of  lives  that  are 
sincere,  and  that  seek  to  be  true  in  conduct  to  the  obe- 
dience of  the  Saviour  whom  they  have  found.  The 
Moslem  found  him  through  the  Scriptures  and  a 
dream ;  the  Armenian,  through  a  godly  life  and  a 
song;  the  Jew,  through  the  Bible;  and  the  Nestorian 
woman  through  a  spoken  message,  and  her  son  through 
his  mother.  To  meet  such  Christians  is  to  have  all 
doubt  removed  as  to  real  conversions  taking  place  on 
mission  fields,  and  as  to  the  depth  and  sincerity  of  the 
spiritual  experiences  of  such  Christians.  They  would 
be  the  last  to  think  that  they  had  apprehended  or  were 
already  perfect.  Their  eyes  are  on  a  country  that  is 
afar  off  and  beyond  all  present  experience.  Each  Sun- 
day evening  until  her  recent  death  the  old  Nestorian 
woman  in  Kermanshah  took  her  son  up  to  the  roof  of 
their  humble  home,  and  said,  "  Now,  Mooshe,  where 
is  Urumia  ?  "  And  the  son  pointed  off  to  the  North- 
ward, beyond  the  snow-clad  hills  of  Kurdistan,  and, 
turning  her  eyes  thither  toward  home,  the  old  woman 
would  sit  down  and  weep,  in  no  desire  to  return,  but 
in  expectation  of  that  better  country,  even  a  heavenly. 


XXX 

PASTOR  TSIANG'S  STORY 

HANG-CHOW  is  a  great  Chinese  city  South- 
west of  Shanghai.  The  Chinese  think  that  it 
is  a  beautiful  city  to  Hve  in.  "  Below  is 
Hang-chow,"  some  of  them  say,  "  above  is 
heaven."  We  would  not  think  it  very  beautiful,  with 
its  narrow  streets,  its  temples  and  idols,  its  crowded 
markets  and  dirty  canals.  But  it  is  very  picturesque. 
A  temple  on  a  hill  in  the  city  overlooks  the  quaint,  tiled 
roofs  with  upturned  eaves.  Little  shrines  confront 
one  as  he  comes  to  a  wall  ahead  which  turns  the  street 
sharply  to  left  or  right.  This  is  to  confuse  the  evil 
spirits,  which  travel  in  straight  lines  only  and  will  run 
against  the  wall  when  they  fly  down  the  street.  Here 
and  there,  perhaps,  a  group  of  yellow-robed  Buddhist 
priests  are  kneeling  in  a  shop,  saying  prayers  for  the 
dead,  repeating  Buddha's  name  over  and  over  again ; 
or  a  few  old  women  are  doing  the  same,  placing  their 
fingers  on  spots  on  long,  yellow  slips  of  paper  for  each 
mention  of  the  sacred  name. 

Yet  it  is  not  wholly  a  heathen  city.  Yonder  is  the 
college  of  the  American  Presbyterian  Mission,  and 
just  beyond  is  the  hospital  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  and  in  another  part  of  the  city  is  the  girls' 
school  of  the  Southern  Presbyterians.  There  are  many 
good  Chinese  Christians  here,  and  none  of  them  have 
been  more  useful  or  more  beloved  than  good  old  pastor 
Tsiang,  who  has  just  resigned  his  pastorate  after  many 
years  of  eager,  active  service.  When  in  Hang-chow, 
I  was  so  impressed  with  the  genuine,  earnest  spirit  of 
the  old  man,  that  I  asked  him  to  write  his  life  story  for 

375 


376        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

me.  He  did  this,  modestly  calling  himself  "  a  younger 
brother  in  the  Church."  Mr,  Garritt  of  Hang-chow 
translated  his  paper. 

A  younger  brother  in  the  Church,  Tsiang  Nying- 
Kwe,  of  Hang-chow,  China,  desires  to  give  a  brief  ac- 
count of  how  God  and  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  from  the 
first  till  now,  has  saved  him  and  given  him  great  favour. 

My  home  was  originally  at  Ning-po ;  my  ancestors,* 
from  my  great-grandfather  to  my  father  were,  for  the 
most  part  scholars  and  Confucianists.  Although  Con- 
fucianists,  they  still  believed  in  the  divinities  of  Bud- 
dhism and  Taoism  and  worshipped  these  idols.  From 
my  childhood  I  followed  my  parents  in  the  worship  of 
idols,  believing  that  the  idols  in  the  temples  were 
divinities,  which  should  be  reverenced.  I  did  not  know 
that  there  was  one  true  God  in  heaven  above,  or  the 
Lord  who  saves  us. 

When  over  ten  years  old,  I  entered  a  school  in  our 
neighbourhood,  reading  the  Four  Books  and  Five  Clas- 
sics. Though  studying  these  books,  I  still  did  not 
know  the  how  or  why  of  living.  When  fifteen  years 
old,  because  of  poor  crops  and  straitened  circumstances, 
I  had  to  stop  school  and  look  out  for  the  opportunity 
of  learning  a  trade.  But  while  waiting  for  a  favour- 
able opportunity  to  present  itself,  my  second  older 
brother,  who  was  already  in  the  printing  office — now 
called  the  Presbyterian  Mission  Press — came  home  and 
told  me  that  foreigners  had  a  school  on  the  North 
Bank,  Ning-po,  in  which  the  method  of  study  was  very 
excellent  and  the  teachers  were  very  learned.  He  said 
that  the  books  studied  were  the  Chinese  Four  Books 
and  Five  Classics,  and  religious  (i.  e.,  Christian)  books. 
As  soon  as  I  heard  of  this,  I  asked  him  to  find  some 
one  to  recommend  me. 

So  I  entered  the  mission  school,  in  January,  1854. 
At  that  time  my  only  thought  was  to  learn  a  little  of 
our  literature,  in  hope  of  getting  a  name  (i.  e.,  a  de- 
gree) ;  although  I  was  diligent  in  study,  I  gave  no  heed 
to  religious  matters.  H  others  exhorted  me,  I  did 
not  heed  it  in  the  least  degree.     I  remember  once  a 

*  The   Chinese  phrase   includes   uncles   and  granduncles. 


Pastor  Tsiang's  Story  377 

Mr.  Zi  called  me  into  his  room  and  exhorted  me  to 
believe,  askins^  me  if  I  did  believe.  I  answered  in  the 
common  sayint^:  "  To  those  who  believe,  he  exists  (or, 
the  gods  exist)  ;  to  those  who  do  not  believe,  he  does 
not  exist."  At  that  time  my  heart  was  still  dark  and  in 
nowise  different  from  what  it  had  been  at  home. 

After  a  couple  of  years  God's  grace  came  upon  me, 
so  that  I  gradually  came  to  understand ;  it  was  within 
my  heart,  as  when  the  light  dawns  in  the  East.  Finally, 
when  I  understood  more  clearly,  I  made  the  decision 
to  trust  in  God  and  be  the  disciple  of  Jesus.  Just  when 
I  was  about  to  believe,  my  brother  also  received  grace 
through  the  Holy  Spirit  to  believe  the  truth.  When 
my  mother  heard  that  both  of  us  were  believing,  she 
was  greatly  incensed,  considering  that  we  had  taken  up 
with  heretical  belief  and  cast  away  our  ancestors.  So 
she  wept  and  wailed  night  and  day,  and  resisted  us 
with  all  her  might.  Besides,  there  were  our  other  rela- 
tions, greater  and  lesser  uncles,  cousins,  and  our  neigh- 
bours, who  used  their  best  endeavour  to  oppose  our 
believing.  By  the  help  of  God,  we  two  brothers  were 
unchanged  in  our  purpose. 

We  had  a  cousin,  who,  seeing  us  so  firm,  was  aston- 
ished, and  asked  us  to  tell  him  what  this  doctrine  really 
was  and  what  good  one  received  through  believing  it. 
So  we  explained  to  him  minutely,  and  he  was  greatly 
pleased,  as  he  heard,  and  was  desirous  of  going  with 
us  on  the  heavenly  road,  just  like  Pliable,  in  Pilgrim's 
Progress.  For  several  months  he  accompanied  us  in 
prayer  and  observance  of  Sabbath  worship.  After- 
wards his  parents  came  and  quarrelled  with  my  mother, 
because  he  had  believed,  saying  that  we  brothers  had 
led  him  astray.  Finally,  our  mother,  worried  beyond 
endurance  by  them,  commanded  that  we  should  be  sat- 
isfied with  believing  ourselves,  but  should  not  exhort 
our  cousin  to  believe.  After  some  months  our  cousin, 
being  unable  to  withstand  the  persecution,  graduallv 
turned  back.     This  was  most  sad. 

The  church,  hearing  of  our  difficulties,  encouraged 
and  comforted  us.  The  eighth  month  of  that  year  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Rankin  baptized  my  brother,  and  in  the  tenth 
month  he  baptized  me.     From  that  time,  although  my 


378        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

mother  was  displeased  at  our  entering  the  church,  yet, 
as  our  cousin  had  fallen  away,  and  his  parents  no 
longer  troubled  her,  our  mother  let  the  matter  rest,  and 
did  not  trouble  us.  This  was  God's  merciful  purpose 
of  lightening-  our  persecution  and  enabling  us  to  ob- 
tain saving  grace. 

I  studied  in  this  school,  altogether,  eight  years,  fin- 
ishing my  course  when  nineteen  years  old.  After  this, 
I  first  went  out  to  preach,  and  afterwards  taught  school 
for  three  years.  When  I  was  twenty-three  years  old, 
Dr.  Nevius  wrote  for  me  to  go  to  Shan-tung  to  help 
him  in  missionary  work.  I  remained  there  a  year  and 
a  half,  and  then  returned  to  Ning-po.  Having  mar- 
ried, the  second  year  I  itinerated  about  Yu-yiao,  Zong- 
yu  and  Shao-hing.  The  end  of  my  twenty-fifth  year  I 
came  with  the  Rev.  Mr.  Green  to  Hang-chow  and 
rented  a  house.  The  next  year  I  brought  my  family 
to  Hang-chow.  From  that  time  to  this,  thirty-four 
years,  I  have  lived  in  Hang-chow.  At  the  first,  on  this 
side  the  Dzao-ngo  River,  and  including  Hang-chow, 
there  was  not  a  single  Christian,  excepting  myself  (and 
family)  and  a  native  preacher,  Mr.  Chang,  connected 
with  the  church  mission  in  Hang-chow.  Since  then, 
by  God's  favour,  the  doors  of  entrance  have  gradually 
opened,  several  churches  have  been  organized,  and  the 
various  denominations  also  have  foreign  missionaries 
living  in  Hang-chow.  Christians  have  grown  in  num- 
bers every  year,  until  at  present,  in  the  stri])  from  Dzao- 
ngo  River  north  to  Hu-chow  there  are  fully  a  thousand 
baptized  converts,  of  whom  some  three  hundred  belong 
to  the  Presbyterian  Church.  This,  God  and  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  has  done  by  His  own  power ;  it  is  not  the 
work  of  us  men. 

When  I  was  twenty-four  years  old.  Presbytery  li- 
censed me,  and  the  }ear  I  was  twenty-seven  I  was  or- 
dained as  an  evangelist,  having  oversight  of  Hang- 
chow  church.  The  next  year  Hang-chow  and  Sin-z 
churches  called  me  as  pastor.  After  some  years  Sin-z 
became  independent  of  Hang-chow,  and  I  had  sole  care 
of  the  latter  church.  Through  all  these  years,  thanks 
be  to  God  for  His  favour,  my  work  has  been  almost 
wholly  peaceful.    Though  there  have  been  some  times 


Pastor  Tsiang's  Story  379 

when  preaching  was  attended  with  danger  and  persecu- 
tion, the  Lord  always  dehvered  me.  The  most  danger- 
ous time  was  that  when  Mr,  Dodd  and  I  met  with 
trouble  at  Kia-hing.  Some  ten  thousand  people  gath- 
ered together,  purposing  to  kill  us.  Though  my  head 
was  injured  and  blood  flowed,  yet  the  Lord  saved  me 
from  the  tiger's  mouth.  At  present  the  Southern  Pres- 
byterian Alission  has  entered  Kia-hing,  and  can  pro- 
claim the  gospel  there.  This  is  to  me  a  source  of  great 
pleasure  and  comforts  me  greatly. 

When  I  think  how  worthless  a  servant  of  Christ  I 
am,  without  talents  or  virtues,  I  feel  I  can  of  myself 
accomplish  no  good  work.  I  constantly  realize  that  I 
am  an  indolent  servant ;  in  all  things  God  has  added 
His  exceeding  grace  and  helped  me.  Therefore,  I  wish 
to  praise  and  thank  the  Lord  for  His  great  mercy.  Sad 
to  say  I  am  growing  old,  my  body  is  not  strong,  my 
eyes  are  poor,  so  that  I  cannot  now  work  so  hard  in  the 
Lord's  service.     In  this  respect  I  have  some  sorrow. 

I  now  have  two  sons  and  a  daughter,  all  of  whom 
are  Jesus's  disciples.  The  oldest  is  in  the  C.  M.  S.  Hos- 
pital, a  Western  physician,  and  helping  the  Church 
Mission.  The  second  is  a  licentiate  in  our  own  Church, 
preaching  at  Soochow  and  helping  in  a  school.  The 
youngest,  a  daughter,  is  still  at  home,  helping  her 
mother  and  giving  some  time  to  study.  God's  grace 
to  me  is  full  and  overflowing,  truly  beyond  my  power 
to  thank  Him  fully.  I  only  pray  that  God  will  give 
me  a  few  years  on  earth,  if  there  may  yet  be  a  little 
work  for  me  to  do  for  Him ;  and  that  the  Lord  Jesus 
would  give  to  my  whole  family  and  to  the  whole  Church 
in  Hang-chow,  the  Spirit's  gifts,  that  all  may  by  holy 
living,  holv  courage,  holy  service,  and  holy  love,  glorify 
the  name  of  God.  and  that  by  God's  grace  we  may  save 
our  own  souls  and  those  of  our  fellow-men.  May  glory 
be  to  God  through  endless  ages.     Amen. 

TsiANG  Nying-Kwe. 

I  spoke  to  Pastor  Tsiang's  church,  one  Sunday 
morning,  on  the  four  things  he  mentions  at  the  close  of 
his  story — holy  living,  holy  courage,  holy  service,  and 
holy  love — and  he  nodded  assent  to  what  touched  his 


380       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

heart.  It  could  be  wished  that  we  were  as  eager  to 
glorify  the  name  of  God  by  these  things  as  this  dear 
old  Chinese  preacher  has  been  and  has  desired  others 
to  be.  Perhaps  his  simple  story  may  make  some  of  us 
willing  to  serve  Christ  with  whole  hearts,  as  he  has 
served  Him.  It  will,  at  any  rate,  enable  us  to  see  how 
the  gospel  takes  hold  of  a  Chinese  mind  and  how  sin- 
cere and  intelligent  a  Chinese  Christian's  faith  may  be. 
The  work  that  produces  such  results  is  real. 


XXXI 

A  CHINESE  PREACHER 

THERE  was  in  the  gatherings  of  native  Chris- 
tians, at  Ningpo,  a  bright-faced  little  man, 
with  a  strong,  mobile  mouth,  with  whom  I 
was  impressed  when  I  visited  that  city.  When 
a  puzzling  question  was  asked,  he  would  be  the  first 
one  to  grasp  it,  and  his  bright  little  eyes  would  twinkle 
and  his  lips  twitch  with  delight.  Yiang  was  his  name. 
There  had  been  a  time  when  the  missionaries  feared 
that  perhaps  his  Christianity  was  just  an  intellectual 
thing,  but  his  heart  had  grown  warmer  and  warmer, 
and  Jesus  had  become  very  real  and  very  dear  to  him. 

I  was  so  much  pleased  with  his  character,  his 
frank,  canny  ways,  that  I  asked  him  to  write  out 
for  me  the  story  of  his  experience.  He  hesitated  to 
do  so  at  first,  saying  that  it  was  too  great  an  honour 
to  be  asked  to  tell  his  Hfe  story;  but  at  last  he  con- 
sented and  wrote  it  out  in  the  Ningpo  dialect  of 
Chinese,  and  Miss  Cunningham,  of  Ningpo,  translated 
it  for  me,  as  follows : 

Mr.  Speer  has  requested  me  to  write  an  account  of 
my  conversion,  spiritual  growth,  and  the  progress  of 
the  gospel  now  as  compared  with  former  days.  My 
ability  and  virtues  are  very  limited,  and  I  have  noth- 
ing to  tell  others,  but  as  I  have  no  excuse  to  offer,  I 
will  speak  briefly  of  these  three  thmgs : 

I.  My  native  village  is  forty  li  (thirteen  miles)  dis- 
tant from  the  city  of  Ningpo.  My  parents  were  not 
Christians.  When  I  was  twelve  years  of  age  I  was  at- 
tending a  native  school.  Just  at  this  time  six  play- 
mates of  mine,  from  the  same  village,  who  were  at- 
tending the  mission  school  in  Ningpo,  returned  for 
their  vacation,  and  spoke  in  high  terms  of  the  supe- 

381 


382       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

riority  of  the  school.  I  reported  this  to  my  parents, 
and  when  I  was  thirteen  they  sent  me  to  the  school,  al- 
though they  were  still  unbelievers.  Two  other  boys 
came  with  me  and  applied  for  admission  at  the  same 
time.  Dr.  S.  N.  D.  Alartin  was  then  in  charge  of  the 
school,  and  he  had  a  rule  that  only  those  who  already 
had  a  knowledge  of  character  (Chinese  letters)  would 
be  received.  The  other  two  boys  failed  to  pass  the 
entrance  examination  and  were  rejected.  I  remained 
in  the  school  for  several  years.  Dr.  Martin  was  con- 
stantly exhorting  me  to  become  a  Christian.  I  was 
still  young,  and  had  always  been  under  heathen  in- 
fluences ;  moreover,  the  non-Christians  in  the  school 
ridiculed  the  believers,  so  I  was  irregular  in  my  pray- 
ing, not  at  all  well  behaved,  and  grew  cold  and  in- 
diflferent. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen  I  had  an  attack  of  typhoid 
fever,  and  at  that  time  decided  to  accept  Christ  as 
my  Saviour.  At  eighteen  I  had  a  still  more  severe 
attack  of  typhoid,  and  my  life  was  despaired  of;  al- 
though I  had  not  received  baptism  I  was  not  afraid  to 
die,  because  I  was  trusting  in  Jesus  for  salvation. 
However,  the  Lord  was  gracious  and  restored  my 
health,  and  I  was  then  baptized  by  Doctor  Nevius; 
but  during  this  period  I  was  not  zealous;  on  the  other 
hand,  very  lukewarm. 

2.  In  regard  to  my  Christian  life,  at  this  time  there 
was  nothing  of  which  to  boast.  From  the  age  of 
twenty-one  to  twenty-six  I  taught  a  day  school.  My 
heart  w^as  filled  with  worldly  ambitions.  I  had  not 
decided  to  take  up  the  Lord's  cross  and  bear  it  for 
Him,  and  become  a  preacher.  But  when  I  was  twenty- 
six  my  elder  brother  died,  and  this  brought  home  to 
me  the  truth  of  the  vanity  of  worldly  glory  and  riches, 
and  I  then  made  up  my  mind  to  be  a  witness-bearer  for 
the  Lord.  At  twenty-seven  years  of  age  I  became 
a  theological  student  and  was  conscious  of  increasing 
faith  and  courage  and  growth  in  eamestness  in  serv- 
ing the  Lord.  At  thirty  years  of  age  I  became  a 
licentiate,  and  at  thirty-one  was  ordained  at  Tsin- 
cong,  as  pastor  of  the  church  there. 

My  belief  in  Christ,  becoming  a  labourer  for  him, 


A  Chinese  Preacher  383 

and  growth  in  grace,  have  all  come  through  discipline, 
exactly  in  accordance  with  the  teachings  of  Scripture. 
"  Whom  the  Lord  loveth  He  chasteneth."  These  have 
been  the  turning  points  in  my  life,  and  I  cannot  but 
praise  the  Lord  for  his  great  mercies. 

3.  A  comparison  between  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel  forty  years  ago  and  now. 

(i)  Places.  Forty  years  ago  preaching  could  be 
done  only  in  Ningpo,  Shanghai,  and  the  other  open 
ports,  with  their  immediate  suburbs.  It  was  quite  im- 
possible to  preach  in  Hang-chow  or  the  interior. 

(2)  Men's  hearts,  (a)  Formerly,  when  one  joined 
the  church,  he  was  expelled  from  the  clan ;  now  there 
is  no  difference  made,  (b)  Formerly,  none  but  the 
poor  joined  the  church ;  now  literary  men  of  high  de- 
gree as  well  as  the  wealthy  are  joining,  (c)  For- 
merly there  were  many  evil  reports  circulated,  such  as 
gouging  out  the  eyes,  hearts,  and  livers,  and  wrap- 
ping the  bodies  of  the  dead  in  white  cloth ;  now  we 
hear  much  less  of  such  talk.  When  such  questions 
are  asked  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  answer  our- 
selves, as  the  bystanders  will  promptly  deny  the  truth 
of  all  these  rumours,  (d)  Formerly  the  Chinese  peo- 
ple did  not  know  that  the  Jesus  doctrine  was  a  good 
doctrine ;  all  thought  it  was  a  false  religion.  Now  it 
is  known  far  and  wide,  even  by  those  who  have  not 
accepted  it,  to  be  a  thoroughly  good  doctrine ;  though 
difficult  to  obey,  (e)  Those  who  worship  idols  and 
count  beads,  repeating  a  meaningless  formula  of 
words  for  merit,  formerly  very  much  disliked  to  see 
the  preachers  of  the  true  religion ;  now  very  many 
hide  their  beads  when  they  see  us  coming  and  deny 
having  been  in  the  temples  worshipping;  plainly  show- 
ing that  the  light  of  the  gospel  is  shed  abroad,  and 
that  their  consciences  reprove  them ;  but  because  of  the 
difficulty  of  breaking  off  old  customs  and  kcc]Mng  the 
Sabbath,  they  are  ashamed  to  become  Christians.  But 
the  seed  of  the  truth  has  been  planted. 

(3)  From  the  standpoint  of  the  rich  and  honour- 
able, (a)  Formerly  the  literati  and  officials  were  un- 
willing to  pronounce  our  doctrine  good,  and  saw  r,o 
difference     between     the     Protestant     and     Catholic 


384       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Churches.  Now  officials  have  testified  in  the  daily 
papers  that  the  Protestant  Church  is  good,  and  very 
different  from  the  CathoHc.  (b)  Formerly  the  offi- 
cials were  unwilling^  to  have  intercourse  with  the  mis- 
sionaries, and  it  was  very  difficult  to  reach  them. 
Now,  in  Peking,  the  missionaries  have  access  to  many 
high  officials,  such  as  members  of  the  royal  family,  the 
prime  minister,  and  so  on,  and  they  understand  the 
teachings  of  Christ,  (c)  Formerly  it  was  not  real- 
ized that  Western  sciences  were  useful  or  valuable; 
but  since  the  war  with  Japan  all  this  has  been 
changed,  and  now  schools  are  being  opened  every- 
where for  the  pursuance  of  these  studies,  and  even  the 
offi.cials  themselves  are  willing  to  become  pupils,  and 
even  attend  divine  service. 

(4)  From  the  standpoint  of  what  the  Church  has 
done,  (a)  Formerly,  in  the  mission  schools,  the 
scholars  were  given  their  food  and  clothing  free;  no 
well-to-do  people  sent  their  children.  Now  some  pay 
both  their  board  and  tuition.  (b)  Fifty  years  ago 
there  were  very  few  Christians  within  the  laounds  of 
the  presbytery ;  now  there  are  over  one  thousand  and 
in  the  whole  of  China  over  ten  thousand.*  In  an- 
other fifty  years  there  ought  to  be  tens  of  thousands 
added  within  the  bounds  of  the  presbytery ;  and  in  the 
whole  of  China,  with  its  four  hundred  million  people, 
at  least  one-fifth  should  be  converted  to  Christianity, 
(c)  Formerly  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  home 
missionary  society ;  the  contributions  of  the  whole 
Church  were  but  a  few  tens  of  dollars.  Now  we  have 
a  native  home  missionary  society,  which  has  sent  out 
two  ordained  missionaries,  and  the  contributions  for 
this  society  from  all  the  churches  amount  to  over  one 
thousand  dollars.  (d)  Formerly  the  pupils  in  the 
schools  and  patients  in  the  hospitals  were  very  un- 
willing to  accept  Christianity;  hence  the  preachers 
were  scarce ;  there  was  not  one  out  of  a  hundred  of 
the  hospital  patients  who  accepted  Christ.  Now  nearly 
all  the  pupils  in  the  schools  become  Christians  and  are 
willing  to   work    for   their    Saviour,    and   very   many 

*  The  total  number  of  Protestant  Christians  in  China  is 
probably  over  100,000. 


A  Chinese  Preacher  385 

hospital  patients  are  converted.  From  the  C.  M.  S. 
Hospital,  Ningpo,  Christianity  has  spread  to  Taichow- 
fu.  From  the  same  society's  hospital  in  Hang-chow 
it  has  reached  Ts-kyi  and  all  up  that  river.  These 
are  the  very  apparent  results. 

At  the  present  time  we  observe  two  things  in  re- 
gard to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  in  China. 

1.  Things  are  gradually  changing  and  we  hope  will 
continue  to  change  until  all  come  under  the  influence 
of  Christianity.  So  it  is  very  important  that  the  for- 
eign missionaries  quickly  sow  the  good  seed  in  China, 
lest  there  should  be  evil  men  come  from  the  Western 
countries  and  sow  bad  seed,  thus  greatly  injuring  the 
Church. 

2.  All  things  are  now  made  ready ;  what  we  lack 
is  the  Holy  Spirit.  When  the  Holy  Spirit  comes  upon 
us,  customs,  men's  hearts,  and  all  these  things  will  be 
greatly  altered.  As,  for  example,  a  boat  fully  equip- 
ped and  manned  needs  only  the  favourable  wind  to 
start  it.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  the  wind.  We  need  only 
pray  for  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit,  and  all  will  be 
well.  We  trust  that  when  Mr.  Speer  returns  to  his 
native  country,  he  will  pray  for  the  four  hundred 
millions  in  China,  that  the  news  of  salvation  in  Christ 
may  be  rapidly  spread  abroad. 

I  send  greetings  to  all  the  members  of  the  Board, 
and  all  the  brethren  and  sisters  of  the  Church,  and 
wish  to  thank  them  for  the  care  they  have  had  over 
our  Chinese  Church. 

YlANG   LiNG-TSIAO. 

There  are  many  native  Christians  like  Mr.  Yiang — 
clear-headed,  thoughtful,  well-informed.  Indeed,  the 
Christians  are  the  best-informed  men  and  women  in 
China  now,  and  one  of  their  hardest  trials  is  to  see 
their  country  going  steadily  to  pieces,  and  be  loyal  to 
it,  while  at  the  same  time  they  know  perfectly  well 
what  is  the  matter  with  it,  and  have  in  their  Christian 
faith  that  which  would  save  it,  if  only  China  would 
be  wise  and  accept  it.     Any  who  think  that  the  mis- 


386       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sion  converts  are  ignorant  Christians,  professing  to 
believe  for  the  sake  of  loaves  and  fishes,  would  be 
greatly  surprised  if  they  should  fall  into  a  discussion 
with  a  man  like  Mr.  Yiang. 


XXXII 

TWO  KOREAN  CHRISTIANS 

ONE  of  the  chapters  of  Dr.  Griffis's  book  on 
Korea  is  entitled  "  The  Issachar  of  Asia." 
It  is  an  apt  characterization  of  the  patient 
people  who,  like  a  strong  ass  bending  be- 
tween burdens  (Gen.  xlix.  14),  have  been  alternately 
invaded  and  harassed  by  the  stronger  nations  on 
either  side.  And  the  altered  language  of  the  Revised 
Version,  with  its  emphasis  on  Issachar's  disinclination 
to  service,  many  would  maintain,  fits  the  Koreans  even 
better  than  the  language  of  the  King  James  Version : 

"  Issachar  is  a  strong  ass, 
Couching  down  between  the  shcepfolds : 
And  he  saw  a  resting  place  that  it  was  good, 
And  the  land  that  it  was  pleasant ; 
And  he  bowed  his  shoulder  to  bear, 
And  became  a  servant  under  taskwork." 

Subservient  to  others,  secluded  from  the  West,  curious 
in  his  ways,  the  Korean  has  been  held  in  low  esteem. 
The  general  view  of  him  and  his  country  which  the 
captain  of  the  United  States  man-of-war  Palos,  weary 
of  his  long  station  off  the  mud-flats  at  Chemulpo, 
wrote,  years  ago,  in  "  The  Far-away  Land  of  Chosen," 
has  prevailed  until  to-day : 

"  There's  a  singular  country  far  over  the  seas, 
Which  is  known  to  the  world  as  Korea, 
Where   there's   nothing   to   charm    and   nothing    to 
please. 
And  of  cleanliness  not  an  idea, 
387 


388       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Where  a  lucid  description  of  persons  and  things 

Quite  baffles  the  readiest  pen, 
And  stirs  up  strange  qualms  in  the  poet  who  sings 

Of  that  far-away  land  of  Chosen." 

But  though  weak,  base,  and  despised,  God  has  been 
at  work  among  the  Koreans, — the  same  God  who  from 
the  beginning  hath  chosen  "  the  weak  things  of  the 
world  that  He  might  put  to  shame  the  things  that  are 
strong,  and  the  base  things  of  the  world  and  the 
things  that  are  despised."  And  He  has  been  develop- 
ing among  them  characters  of  the  finest  fibre  and 
the  most  genuine  love.  Especially  in  central  and 
Northwestern  Korea,  the  provinces  of  Kiung  Kei 
Whang  Hai,  and  Pyeng  Yang,  where  the  China- Japan 
war  plowed  up  the  emotions  and  minds  of  the  people 
for  the  missionaries'  sowing  of  the  good  seed  of  the 
gospel,  have  a  great  many  groups  of  earnest  Chris- 
tians sprung  up ;  and,  as  in  the  persecutions  that  fol- 
lowed the  death  of  Stephen,  they  that  were  scattered 
abroad  went  everywhere  preaching  the  gospel,  so  these 
Korean  Christians  with  joy  and  singleness  of  heart 
are  spreading  everywhere  the  knowledge  of  what  they 
themselves  have  found. 

And  what  they  have  found,  and  how  truly  they  have 
found  it,  can  best  be  shown  by  their  own  life  stones. 
I  brought  home  from  Korea  a  bundle  of  them  which 
they  were  eager  to  write  out.  even  as  they  were  eager 
daily  to  tell  others  of  the  great  Saviour  and  Deliverer 
of  whom  they  had  learned.  One  is  the  story  of  Ye 
Yung  Min.  a  gentle,  cheerful  man,  of  unresting  energy, 
and  the  most  indefatigable  personal  worker  T  have 
ever  met.  He  went  with  us  on  a  week's  tramp  across 
the  country  to  .Seoul,  and  he  preached  Christ  to  every 
soul  he  met.     All  day  long  he  trudged  along  singing, 


The  Korean  Christians  389 

usually,  "  Nothing  but  the  blood  of  Jesus," — in  Korean, 
of  course — until  he  overtook  another  traveller,  when 
he  would  at  once  begin,  "  Friend,  will  you  not  believe 
in  Jesus  Christ?"  After  the  weary  journey  of  the 
day,  when  we  were  lying  on  our  beds  in  the  open  air 
of  the  village  street,  in  the  sultry  nights  of  August, 
we  would  see  him  in  the  moonlight  squatting  on  his 
heels,  Korean  fashion,  with  a  circle  of  listeners  around 
him  to  whom  he  tired  not  of  speaking  of  the  guilt  of 
human  sin  and  the  preciousness  and  power  of  his  Re- 
deemer,   This  was  Ye's  testimony : 

"  I  was  a  Confucian  scholar,  I  was  proud  of  my 
Chinese  knowledge.  Also  I  was  a  fortune-teller,  and 
told  others  of  the  future,  and  selected  lucky  places 
and  times,  so  that  I  had  the  praise  of  my  friends  for 
many  years.  One  day,  four  years  ago,  a  missionary 
preached  to  me,  and  gave  me  books  of  Matthew  and 
John,  And  I  read  these  books  at  home  for  days. 
While  I  was  reading  the  sixteenth  verse  of  the  third 
chapter  of  John  one  day  I  understood.  After  that  I 
went  every  Sunday  to  the  missionary  to  pray,  and  ask 
him  the  meaning  of  things  in  the  Bible  I  could  not 
understand.  I  am  very  grateful  to  the  missionary  be- 
cause he  loved  and  helped  me  greatly.  I  found  that 
every  one  is  sinful,  but  I  am  worse  than  others,  be- 
cause I  was  a  fortune-teller  and  served  idols.  Since  I 
believed  in  Christ  my  mind  is  peaceful,  even  though 
I  am  beaten  and  cursed  by  others,  Christ  died  on  the 
cross  for  the  world,  so  how  can  I  blame  the  people  who 
beat  and  revile  me?  So  I  pray  for  my  enemies  and 
love  them  that  hate  me.  I  have  learned  three  kinds 
of  duties, — prayer,  preaching,  and  meditation.  Now 
my  parents  and  brethren,  wife  and  children,  all  believe 
in  Christ.  So  my  days  are  full  of  joy,  but  I  do  wish 
to  be  diligent,  not  to  fall  into  temptation  and  sin.     I 


390       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

beg'  you  pray  for  us  every  day,  that  we  may  avoid 
evh."  • 

Song  was  a  man  of  dififcrcnt  type,  reserved  at  first 
acquaintance,  but  full  of  dramatic  vivacity  when  the 
springs  were  opened.  He  had  made  his  way  to  the 
light  through  one  of  the  mystical,  theosophic  systems 
which  flourish  in  a  soil  like  Korea,  where  Shaman- 
istic  superstition  supplements  the  deficiencies  of  Con- 
fucian agnosticism.    This  was  what  Song  wrote: 

"  The  story  of  Song  In  So,  who  lives  in  Whan  Chan, 
of  the  magistracy  of  Pyeng  Yang,  of  the  province  of 
Pyeng  Yang,  in  which  he  tells  about  his  life  previously 
and  after  becoming  a  Christian.  Being  from  my  child- 
hood fond  of  study,  I  studied  the  false  Korean  doc- 
trines, but  never  followed  the  teachings  of  any  of  them, 
and  was  drinking,  gambling,  and  following  a  wild  life. 
Once,  while  visiting  a  Christian  friend  of  mine,  I  asked 
him  what  business  he  had  to  spoil  people  with  that 
foreign  doctrine,  while  there  were  so  many  good 
Korean  doctrines,  and  of  what  use  was  it  to  him  to 
throw  away  Confucianism.  Abusing  him  thus,  I  left. 
Afterwards  I  went  once  to  the  Christian  preaching- 
house  with  the  intention  of  abusing  the  foreigners,  but 
was  received  there  very  cordially.  Being  in  a  very 
embarrassing  position,  I  tried  not  to  listen  to  the 
preaching,  but  looked  over  the  books  that  were  on  the 
table,  and  found  that  they  were  books  that  I  never 
saw  before,  and  that  they  were  written  with  the  pur- 
pose of  deceiving  people  and  making  them  become 
Christians.  I  took  three  of  those  books,  but,  expect- 
ing to  be  ridiculed  by  other  people,  put  them  away 
without  reading.  In  June,  1892,  during  the  rainy  sea- 
son, being  once  very  lonesome,  I  thought  of  the  Chris- 
tian books,  and  read  them.  I  easily  understood  what 
was  said  in  them,  and  thought  that  everything  was 


The  Korean  Christians  391 

right.  Thus  I  became  much  interested  in  Christianity. 
Once  a  teacher  of  *  Cha-riok  '  (a  science  which  teaches 
how,  by  the  use  of  certain  medicines,  to  obtain  super- 
natural strength,  such,  for  example,  as  to  be  able  to 
jump  over  the  highest  house)  called  on  me.  He  said 
that  the  Christian  doctrine  was  quite  useless,  and  pro- 
posed that  I  should  study  '  Cha-riok.'  I  thought  it 
would  be  worth  while  to  try,  and,  on  asking  how  long 
it  would  take,  I  learned  that  it  does  not  take  a  smart 
man  more  than  a  week ;  otherwise,  two  or  three  weeks. 
I  decided  to  try  it  for  a  week.  At  the  end  of  that  time 
I  began  to  feel  as  if  1  obtained  so  much  strength  that 
my  body  was  lifting  itself  up  from  the  floor  and  mov- 
ing about  in  the  air.  Thus  getting  the  impression  that 
my  teacher  was  right,  I  continued  my  studies  for  two 
weeks  more,  at  the  close  of  which  I  really  began  to 
feel  as  if  I  could  move  mountains  and  jump  over 
oceans.  I  have  to  confess,  though,  that  in  a  short  time 
I  was  forced  to  find  out  that  all  this  was  nothing  but 
imagination,  and  so  I  returned  home.  Soon  after  that, 
a  Christian  man  by  the  name  of  Han  Lok  Chin  called 
on  me,  and,  telling  me  about  God  and  about  Christ, 
said  that,  if  I  did  not  repent  of  my  sins,  I  should  have 
to  undergo  an  everlasting  punishment.  I  was  fright- 
ened, and  since  that  time  I  believed  in  the  Lord,  began 
to  preach  to  others,  and  grew  in  my  belief.  The  mag- 
istrate' in  my  city  was  persecuting  Christians,  and  so 
I  had  to  leave  that  place,  and  came  to  the  Pyeng  Yang 
Christians.  There  were  several  other  Christians  who 
ran  away  from  persecutions.  Mr.  Mofifett,  the  mis- 
sionary, gathered  us  once,  and,  giving  us  a  very  good 
lesson  from  the  Bible,  set  our  minds  at  peace.  In  the 
spring  of  A.  D.  1895  I  began  to  feel  God's  call  and  my 
duty  to  go  to  my  native  town  and  preach  the  gospel 
there.     Being  zealous  for  the  growth  of  the  church,  I 


392        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

preached  to  everybody,  and  on  Sundays  held  meetings, 
where  I  tried  to  explain  the  Bible.  At  Pyeng  Yang  I 
went  to  the  missionaries'  Bible  classes,  and,  as  my 
knowledge  in  the  Bible  grew  more  and  more,  my  faith 
became  stronger  and  stronger.  I  was  very  much 
troubled  that  my  parents  and  my  own  family  did  not 
believe,  but  the  loving  Lord  heard  my  prayers,  and 
our  whole  family  repented  of  their  sins,  and  were  now 
born  to  become  God's  children.  It  is  impossible  for 
me  to  tell  freely  about  all  that  the  Lord  has  been  doing 
for  me  in  His  loving-kindness,  therefore  I  tell  only 
very  briefly  about  it." 

These  were  two  of  the  Korean  Christians,  men  of 
simple  faith,  convinced  of  their  own  sin,  and  joyfully 
trusting  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  Saviour.  Him  they  were 
preaching  to  all,  after  first  bringing  their  own  house- 
holds to  Him.  Very  winning  and  attractive  they  were, 
bringing  vividly  to  our  view  what  the  early  Christians, 
stumbling,  primary,  but  full  of  divine  love  and  glad- 
ness, must  have  been.  And,  thinking  of  them,  my 
heart  turns  back  longingly  to  them,  and  I  do  not  at 
all  agree  with  the  captain  of  the  Palos  that 

"  Those  who  escape  never  care  to  return 
To  that  *  morning  calm  '  country  again. 
Where  there's  nothing  on  earth  that  would  cause  one 
to  yearn 
For  that  far-away  land  of  Chosen." 


XXXIII 

MISSIONARY  BIOGRAPHIES 

LIVES  and  deaths  are  the  world's  great  teach- 
ers. "  Of  all  the  pulpits  from  which  the  hu- 
man voice  is  ever  sent  forth,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin, 
"  there  is  none  from  which  it  reaches  so  far 
as  from  the  grave."  "  You,"  Paul  says  to  the  Corinth- 
ians,— "  you  and  the  epistle  of  your  life  are  known  and 
read  of  all  men."  From  lives  and  deaths  have  come 
the  world's  great  influences  of  blessing.  "  If,  while 
Ave  were  enemies,  we  were  reconciled  to  God  through 
the  death  of  His  Son,  much  more,  being  reconciled, 
shall  we  be  saved  by  His  life."  In  a  true  sense,  deaths 
and  lives,  fashioned  in  self-sacrifice  after  Christ's,  are 
full  of  reconciliation  and  salvation  still,  none  more  so 
than  the  lives  and  deaths  of  those  who,  realizing  the 
meaning  of  Christ's  words,  "  As  the  Father  hath  sent 
Me,  even  so  send  I  you,"  have  followed  in  His  foot- 
steps as  missionaries. 

Why  are  we  so  slow  to  recognize  this  ?  "  How  can 
I  maintain  a  warm  missionary  interest  ? "  says  one. 
"  How  can  I  interest  others?  "  asks  a  second.  "  I  find 
it  difficult  to  preach  effective  missionary  sermons," 
complains  the  preacher.  The  young  worker  wonders 
how  the  monthly  missionary  meeting  can  be  kept  up 
year  after  year,  and  never  lose  freshness  and  power. 
"  How  can  this  group  of  boys,"  the  band-leader  in- 
quires, "  be  made  to  take  delight  in  missions  ?  "  There 
is  one  answer  to  all  these :  Do  you  use  the  rich  and 
ever  riclier  stores  of  missionary  biography? 

There  is  power  in  these  life  stories.  See  it  in  the 
unmeasured  and  continuing  influence  of  the  life  of 

393 


394       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

David  Brainerd.  In  1746,  the  Society  for  Promoting 
Christian  Knowledge,  in  Edinburgh,  published  his 
journal.  He  died  the  next  year  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
one.  He  was  no  genius,  orator,  scholar,  or  discoverer. 
Is  there  any  influence  stronger  than  his?  His  journal 
inspired  Carey,  and  helped  to  shape  his  course.  Mar- 
tyn  read  it  at  Cambridge,  and  it  made  him  a  mission- 
ary. Murray  McCheyne  read  it,  and  was  moulded  by 
it.  "  The  Memoirs  of  David  Brainerd  and  Henry 
Martyn  gave  me  particular  pleasure,"  wrote  young 
John  Wilson  in  1824.  "  Try  to  get  hold  of  the  life  of 
John  Wilson,  the  great  Scotch  missionary  of  India," 
wrote  Keith-Falconer  in  1878.  The  apostolic  succes- 
sion goes  on.  Let  any  minister  or  worker,  conscious 
that  his  power  has  departed  from  him,  or  that  he  needs 
more,  turn  to  this  old-time  record  of  a  life  of  utter 
devotion  and  prayer.* 

,  And  there  is  fascination  of  interest  in  a  life  like 
Martyn's.  Sir  James  Stephens  declared  his  to  be  "  the 
one  heroic  name  which  adorns  the  annals  of  the  Church 
of  England,  from  the  days  of  Elizabeth  to  our  own." 
Who  can  read,  without  feeling  the  attractiveness  of 
it  all,  the  story  of  the  mine  captain's  son,  who  was 
Senior  Wrangler,  who,  with  the  burden  of  a  hopeless 
human  love  on  his  heart,  went  to  India  as  a  chaplain 
of  the  East  India  Company,  preaching  on  the  way  in 
Brazil  and  among  the  Hottentots,  shivering  in  India 
"  as  if  standing,  as  it  w^ere,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
hell ;  "  who  mastered  Arabic  and  Persian  that  he  might 
understand  the  Koran  and  translate  the  Scriptures ; 
who  left  India  in  181 1  to  reach  Persia  and  Arabia  to 
preach  there  and  complete  his  translations;  and  w^ho. 
broken  in  health,  fell  at  Tokat  in  1812.  having  literally 

*  Memoirs  of  David  Brainerd.    Edited  by  J.  M.  Sherwood, 

New  York:  Funk  &  Wagnalls. 


Missionary  Biographies  395 

realized  his  own  praver,  "  Now  let  me  burn  out  for 
God."  * 

Can  any  one  read  the  life  of  Alexander  Mackay,  and 
not  be  stirred  to  the  depths  of  his  soul  ?  "  Unable  to 
arouse  interest  in  missions," — surely  the  man  who  says 
this  must  have  lost  sensitiveness  to  the  noble  and  glori- 
ous in  life.  Stanley  thought  the  sight  of  him  worth  a 
long  journey,  and  his  words  are  commended  to  all 
mourners  over  missions :  "  He  has  no  time  to  fret 
and  groan  and  weep ;  and  God  knows,  if  ever  man  had 
reason  to  think  of  '  graves  and  worms  and  oblivion,' 
and  to  be  doleful  and  lonely  and  sad,  Mackay  had 
when  Mwanga,  after  murdering  his  bishop,  and  burn- 
ing his  pupils,  and  strangling  his  converts,  and  club- 
bing to  death  his  dark  friends,  turned  his  eye  of  death 
on  him.  And  yet  the  little  man  met  it  with  calm  blue 
eyes  that  never  winked.  To  see  one  man  of  this  kind 
working  day  after  day  for  twelve  years  bravely,  and 
without  a  syllable  of  complaint  or  a  moan,  amid  the 
*  wildernesses,'  and  to  hear  him  lead  his  little  flock  to 
show  forth  God's  loving-kindness  in  the  morning  and 
his  faithfulness  every  night,  is  worth  going  a  long 
journey  for  the  moral  courage  and  contentment  one 
derives  from  it."  When  Stanley's  party  came  away, 
the  last  sight  was  of  the  lonely  figure  of  "  the  best 
missionary  since  Livingstone  "  standing  on  the  brow 
of  the  hill,  waving  farewell,  and  then  turning  back  to 
his  work  and  his  God.  Is  there  no  interest  in  that 
lonely  figure  ?  f 

Adoniram  Judson's  life,  much  less  wholesomely 
rounded  than  Mackay's,  resembles  more  the  excessive- 

*  Henry  Martyn.  By  George  Smith.  New  York:  Flem- 
ing H.  Revell  Co. 

f  Mackay  of  Uganda.  By  his  Sister.  New  York:  A.  C. 
Armstrong  &  Son. 


396       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ness  and  mysticism  of  Brainerd  and  Martyn.  Our 
admiration  for  it  needs  qualifications ;  but  who  can 
read  the  inscription  of  the  marble  tablet  in  the  Baptist 
meeting-house  at  Maiden — 

IN  MEMORIAM. 


Rev.  Adoniram  Judson, 

Born  August  9,  1788, 

Died  April  12,  1850. 

Maiden,  his  birthplace. 

The  ocean,  his  sepulcher. 

Converted  Burmans,  and 

The  Burman  Bible 

His  monument. 

His  record  is  on  high. 

without  desiring  to  read  that  part  of  his  record  which 
is  written  here  on  the  earth  ?  It  was  a  missionary  book 
— Buchanan's  Star  in  the  East — which  awakened  Jud- 
son's  missionary  spirit.  He  would  have  been  a  great 
man  in  any  sphere.  His  father  foresaw  it.  As  a 
missionary  his  name  is  not  far  below  Paul's.  Though 
the  foremost  of  American  missionaries,  the  story  of 
his  life  is  little  told  outside  of  the  Baptist  churches.  Yet 
there  is  wealth  of  interest  in  it.  Even  children  under- 
stand the  heroism  of  the  spirit  which  endured  calmly 
for  months,  during  the  imprisonment  at  Ava,  taunts 
and  insults,  racking  fever  and  ague,  the  sight  of  dying 
and  tortured  fellow-prisoners,  only  to  break  utterly, 
while  "  the  tears  flowed  down  to  the  chains  that  clanked 
about  his  ankles,"  when  his  wife  brought  their  new- 
born baby,  in  her  frail  arms,  to  be  kissed  through  the 
iron  bars  of  his  cell,  and  offered  to  him  a  mince-pie, 
made  with  effort  and  suffering,  to  remind  him  of  old 


Missionary  Biographies  397 

New  England,  where,  to  judge  from  present  habits, — 
and  may  God  forgive  us  that  it  is  so ! — hundreds  of 
Christians  were  offering  no  prayer  and  taking  no 
thought  for  him.  Does  the  Hfe  of  the  Son  of  God  him- 
self interest  those  who  are  not  interested  in  such  lives 
as  these  ?  * 

Aside  from  the  example  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  there 
is  no  richer  field  than  missionary  biography  for  the 
study  of  one  who  believes  in  prayer,  and  would  help 
others  to  realize  its  power  and  use  it.  The  life  of 
William  C.  Burns,  of  China,  must  suffice  for  illustra- 
tion. "  Know  him,  sir  ?  "  exclaimed  one,  with  almost 
indignant  surprise,  when  asked  if  he  knew  Burns. 
"  All  China  knows  him.  He  is  the  holiest  man  alive." 
It  is  easy  to  understand  why  men  felt  this  way.  While 
residing  in  Edinburgh,  before  going  to  China,  he  had 
a  private  key  to  the  church  of  St.  Luke's,  and  there 
an  entry  in  his  journal  indicates  that  at  least  on  one 
occasion  he  was  "  detained  "  a  whole  night  in  solitary 
prayer  "  before  the  Lord."  In  beginning  his  ministry 
in  Dundee,  he  was  known  to  spend  the  whole  night  on 
his  face  on  the  floor,  praying  that  he  might  meet  the 
responsibilities  laid  upon  him.  "  All  the  week  long 
'  he  filled  the  fountains  of  his  spirit  with  prayer,'  and 
on  Sabbath  the  full  fountain  gave  forth  its  abundant 
treasures."     Such  prayer  makes  influence  immortal. 

"  O  William  Burns !  we  will  not  call  thee  dead, 
Though  lies  thy  body  in  its  narrow  bed 
In  far-off  China." 

When  the  trunk  containing  the  property  he  had  left 
behind  was  opened  in  England,  there  were  found  "  a 

*  The  Life  of  Adoniram  Jiidson.  By  Edward  Judson. 
New  York:  A.  D.  F.  Randolph  &  Co. 


39^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

few  sheets  of  Chinese  printed  matter,  a  Chinese  and 
an  English  Bible,  an  old  writing-case,  one  or  two  small 
books,  a  Chinese  lantern,  a  single  Chinese  dress,  and 
the  blue  flag  of  the  '  Gospel  Boat.'  '  Surely,'  whis- 
pered one  little  one  amid  the  awestruck  silence, — 
'  surely  he  must  have  been  very  poor.'  "  There  was 
One  who  for  his  sake  and  ours  had  been  poorer  still.* 
For  purposes  of  sober  illustration  or  intense  appeal 
to  the  unselfish  and  heroic,  nothing  can  surpass  the  life 
of  David  Livingstone,  whom  Florence  Nightingale 
called  "  the  greatest  man  of  his  generation."  The 
vision  of  the  boy  placing  his  book  on  the  spinning- 
jenny,  and  studying  amid  the  roar  of  the  machinery 
at  Blantyre,  or  sitting  contentedly  down  before  his 
father's  door  to  spend  the  night,  upon  arriving  after 
the  hour  for  locking  it ;  the  old  coat,  eleven  years  be- 
hind the  fashion,  which  he  w'ore  when  he  emerged  at 
Cape  Town  after  Kolabeng  had  been  pillaged ;  the  sad- 
ness of  the  scene  when  he  buried  his  little  daughter  in 
"  the  first  grave  in  all  this  country,"  he  wrote  to  his 
parents,  "  marked  as  the  resting-place  of  one  of  whom 
it  is  believed  and  confessed  that  she  shall  live  again ;  " 
his  jocular  letters  to  his  daughter  Agnes  about  his 
distorted  teeth,  "  so  that  my  smile  is  like  that  of  a 
hippopotamus ;  "  the  meeting  with  Stanley  when  he 
was  a  "  mere  ruckle  of  bones ;  "  the  indomitable  grit 
of  the  man  whose  last  words  in  Scotland  were :  "  Fear 
God,  and  work  hard," — this  life  is  full  of  such  things 
as  these,  capable  of  use.  inviting  it.  And  when,  before 
or  since,  has  this  world  been  swayed  by  eloquence  com- 
parable with  that  of  his  death?  No  pulpit  has  ever 
spoken  with  such  power.  The  worn  frame  kneeling 
by  the  bedside  at  Ilala,  pulseless  and  still,  while  the 

*  Memoir  of  the  Rev.    Will  tarn  C.  Burns,  M.  A.      By  the 
Rev.  Islay  Burns,  D.  D.     London:  James  Nisbet  &  Co. 


Missionary  Biographies  399 

rain  dripped  from  the  eaves  of  the  hut,  dead  in  the 
attitude  of  prayer,  solitary  and  alone,  sent  a  thrill 
through  the  souls  of  men,  which,  thank  God !  is  vibrat- 
ing still,  and,  with  or  without  the  help  of  those  who 
are  "  not  interested,"  is  working  out  the  redemption 
wrought  once  for  Africa  by  the  world's  Redeemer.* 

Are  preachers  and  teachers  missing  the  blessing 
enfolded  in  these  lives,  and  derivable  from  them? — 
each  the  life  of 

"  One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast 
forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break. 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong 

would  triumph. 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 

*  Personal  Life  of  David  Livingstone.     By  W.  G.  BlaikieV' 
New  York:  Harper  &  Brothers. 


XXXIV 

MISSIONARY  HEROISM  I  HAVE   KNOWN 

ONE  of  the  most  heroic  missionary  lives  I 
have  known  closed  in  this  lower  sphere  of 
service  on  the  i8th  of  February,  1899,  in 
Tung-chow,  China.  Julia  Brown  was  born 
near  Delaware,  O.,  July  6,  1837.  Her  mother  died 
when  she  was  eight  years  old  and  her  father  when  she 
was  fifteen.  When  she  was  eighteen,  she  confessed 
Christ  as  her  Saviour,  and,  having  spent  her  small 
patrimony  in  her  education,  went  out  to  make  her  own 
way  in  the  world. 

In  1862  she  married  the  Rev.  Calvin  W.  Mateer,  and 
the  next  year  they  started  for  China  on  a  sailing  vessel, 
which  took  167  days  to  go  around  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  to  Shanghai.  The  food  and  the  treatment  by 
the  captain  permanently  injured  Mrs.  Mateer's  health, 
but  a  murmur  never  once  in  her  long  missionary  life 
of  thirty-four  years  escaped  her  lips.  In  all  that  time 
she  came  home  to  the  United  States  but  twice. 

The  great  work  of  her  life  was  at  the  Tung-chow 
College,  which  she  and  her  husband  founded  and  de- 
veloped. She  taught,  had  charge  of  the  accounts, 
looked  after  the  boarding-department  and  a  hundred 
things.  She  studied  medicine,  and  became  a  really 
skillful  physician.  But  most  of  all,  she  sank  her  life 
into  the  lives  of  the  young  men.  Of  this  slow,  loving, 
exhausting  work  she  never  wearied ;  she  hungered  to 
win  lives  to  Christ,  and  of  the  142  graduates  at  the 
time  of  her  death,  every  one  was  a  Christian. 

On  her  sixtieth  birthday  the  Chinese  Christians  pre- 
sented her  with  a  large  blue  tablet  inscribed  with  the 

400 


Missionary  Heroism  I  Have  Known     401 

four  Chinese  characters  signifying  "  The  Venerable 
Nourishing  Mother  of  Heroes."  Her  young  men  have 
gone  far  and  wide  through  China,  and  wherever  they 
have  gone  her  remarkable  influence  has  gone  also.  She 
sought  no  fame.  She  endured  hardness.  She  smiled 
at  suffering.  She  did  not  desire  ease.  All  lesser  hero- 
ism of  bravery  in  physical  peril  in  her  life  pales  beside 
the  noble  heroism  of  a  whole  life,  frail  and  painful 
often,  spent  without  pride  or  plaint,  for  the  young 
men  of  China. 

Another  of  the  truest  missionaries  ended  the  toil  of 
an  heroic  life  in  Africa  less  than  four  years  ago.  Miss 
Ellen  C.  Parsons  has  told  his  life-story  in  A  Life  for 
Africa.  Adolphus  C.  Good  was  of  the  best  type  of 
American  country  boys,  simple,  alert,  self-reliant,  fear- 
less, patient,  resolute,  modest,  true.  Twelve  years 
covered  his  work  for  his  Master.  It  was  another  life 
in  which  the  heroism  of  the  whole  life  swallowed  up 
and  obscured  those  trivial  dangers,  threatenings,  tragic 
situations,  and  escapes  which  are  the  commonplace  of 
missionary  history. 

The  quiet,  heroic  unselfishness  of  the  man  is  illus- 
trated in  what  he  calls  his  "  unvarnished  selfishness  " 
in  a  letter  to  his  wife.  "  In  the  present  state  of  our 
mission  there  is  no  honourable  course  for  me  but  to 
stay  on  the  old  craft  as  long  as  I  possibly  can.  The 
Board,  the  Church,  and  you  would  despise  me  if  I  were 
to  leave  the  field  now.  If  I  ever  go  home,  I  want  to 
go  with  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of.  But  I  will  tell  you 
what  I  have  done,  and  you  will  vote  it  about  the  most 
selfish  thing  I  ever  proposed.  I  laid  a  request  before 
the  mission  which  opens  the  way  for  you  to  come  out 
again,  .  .  .  When  I  think  of  the  comforts  and  the 
friends  that  surround  you,  inviting  you  out  to  this  land 
of  bush  and  mosquitoes  to  relieve  my  loneliness  seems 


402        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

unvarnished  selfishness.  .  .  .  Evenings  are  most 
lonely  when  mosquitoes  make  it  impossible  to  read  or 
write,  and  I  can  only  walk  the  floor  and  think.  But 
don't  worry;  I  am  not  going  to  die  of  home-sickness 
in  a  hurry.  ...  To  leave  work  here  for  personal 
comfort  would  be  little  less  than  treason."  This  was 
his  spirit,  and  in  this  spirit  opening  a  way  into  the  in- 
terior, he  died  of  fever. 

"  It  is  well  that  I  die  upon  the  field 

Where  I  have  lived  and  worked  and  fought; 
I  die  upon  my  shield." 

Missionary  history  in  Africa  under  the  equatorial 
sun  is  full  of  brave  self-denials,  but  I  know  of  scarcely 
anything  more  quietly  heroic  than  the  conduct  of  one 
young  missionary,  who  to  prepare  himself  for  the  hard 
journeys  through  the  forest  into  the  interior  toughened 
his  feet  by  going  barefoot  over  the  rough  coast  until 
he  should  be  esteemed  fit  to  have  a  share  in  the  more 
arduous  service  he  coveted. 

The  heroism  of  surrendering  children,  of  sundering 
homes,  of  long  separations,  lasting  for  years  in  the 
case  of  some  husbands  and  wives  I  know,  are  too 
sacred  to  be  laid  bare ;  but  the  very  common  heroism 
of  isolation  endured  cheerfully  for  Christ's  sake  is  so 
vital  a  part  of  ordinary  missionary  life  as  to  demand 
illustration. 

I  think  at  once  of  a  woman  in  Persia,  for  more  than 
twenty-five  years  a  missionary  to  Armenians  and  Mo- 
hammedans. We  went  with  her  in  October,  1896,  from 
Tabriz,  her  home,  to  Mianduab,  a  Moslem  town  at  the 
southern  end  of  the  lake  of  Oroomiah,  which  she  pro- 
posed to  make  her  home  for  many  months.  It  was 
four  days'  journey  away  from  the  nearest  people  of 
her  own  language  and  race.     Here  she  settled  among 


Missionary  Heroism  I  Have  Known     403 

the  Moslems  in  a  little  mud  house  of  one  room  and  a 
small  hall ;  and,  when  we  rode  away,  she  stood  smiling 
before  her  door,  waving  her  hand  to  us  and  surrounded 
only  by  the  poor  Moslem  women,  among  whom  she 
had  come  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister. 

A  year  after,  she  wrote  this  report :  "  By  the  help 
of  God  I  read  and  taught  the  pure  gospel,  at  first 
with  fear  and  trembling.  Afterwards  I  began  to  feel 
that  I  was  too  cautious,  and  I  determined,  if  all  the 
powers  of  hell  should  rise  up  against  me,  I  would  de- 
clare the  whole  word  of  God.  .  .  .  Many  who  had 
been  coming  to  my  meetings  stopped  coming.  I  was 
warned  not  to  say  that  Christ  is  God.  I  replied  that 
I  must  preach  the  word  of  God  just  as  I  found  it  in 
His  holy  Book." 

And  so  she  did,  and  for  almost  a  year  in  that  Mos- 
lem town,  never  seeing  any  of  her  own  people,  among 
the  followers  of  the  Prophet  who  forbade  his  disciples 
to  have  dealings  with  Christians  except  to  humiliate 
them  and  bring  them  low,  living  in  her  little  mud  house 
through  the  cold  and  storms  of  winter,  Miss  Jewett 
worked,  winning  the  love  and  confidence  of  all,  and 
coming  away  only  when  it  became  evident  that  to  do 
such  work  again  she  must  get  away  for  a  little  while 
to  some  station  where  she  could  see  others  and  have 
a  few  of  the  necessities  of  life.  Such  isolations,  sepa- 
rations from  home,  and  identification  with  the  inde- 
scribable, deadening  conditions  of  heathen  life  are  the 
every-day  requirements  of  true  missionary  service. 

I  recall  now  another  illustration,  picked  out  of 
scores.  A  missionary  wrote  one  winter  that  he  had 
stopped  talking  to  the  Chinese  around  him,  and  was 
writing  his  note  in  a  Chinese  house,  where  he  and  a 
friend  were  staying  on  an  itinerating  trip.  It  was  a 
bitterly  cold  winter.     His  hands  were  trembling  and 


404       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

blue.  His  tongue  was  so  wearied  that  he  could 
scarcely  speak  longer.  It  lay  heavy  and  swollen  in  his 
mouth.  It  was  opportunity,  opportunity,  opportunity. 
And  they  were  so  insufficient ! 

The  life  of  native  Christians  is  too  often  a  constant 
demand  for  heroic  endurance  and  courage.  The  con- 
vert comes  out  from  his  own  people,  sets  himself  in 
antagonism  to  the  prejudices  of  his  nation,  at  once  lays 
himself  open  to  the  charge  of  a  want  of  patriotism,  of 
filial  piety  and  loyalty,  is  ostracized  and  too  often  sub- 
jected to  a  persecution  that  ends  in  martyrdom. 

The  Laos  mission  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  was 
born  of  such  sacrifice.  In  1868  the  first  converts,  eight 
in  all,  were  arrested.  Two  were  taken  before  the  au- 
thorities and  confessed  that  they  had  forsaken  Bud- 
dhism. The  death  yoke  was  then  put  around  their 
necks  and  a  small  rope  was  passed  through  holes  in 
their  ears  and  carried  tightly  over  the  beam  of  the 
house.  After  a  night  of  torture  they  still  refused  to 
deny  Christ,  and  were  told  to  prepare  for  execution. 
Taken  ofT  into  the  jungle,  they  were  pounded  to  death 
with  clubs,  and  one  of  them  who  lived  too  long  under 
this  punishment  was  also  thrust  through  the  heart  with 
a  spear.  Each  of  those  two  martyrs  is  now  represented 
by  more  than  a  thousand  Christians. 

Some  of  the  finest  instances  of  heroism  displayed 
in  our  missions  are  among  the  Moslems.  The  life  and 
death  of  Mirza  Ibrahim  were  illustrations  of  this.  A 
few  years  ago  at  Khoi,  in  Persia,  this  Mohammedan 
accepted  and  confessed  Christ.  His  wife,  children,  and 
property  were  taken  from  him,  and,  though  sick  and 
feeble,  he  was  forced  to  flee.  At  Urumia  he  found 
refuge  with  the  missionaries;  but  he  was  bent  upon 
preaching  Christ,  and  he  was  soon  summoned  before 
the  governor  and  beaten,  even  the  governor  kicking 


Missionary  Heroism  I  Have  Known     405 

him.  He  resisted  bribery,  by  which  he  was  tempted 
to  deny  Jesus,  and  was  thrown  into  prison  with  a  chain 
about  his  neck  and  his  feet  in  the  stocks.  From  the 
Urumia  prison  he  was  removed  to  Tabriz,  where  he 
was  placed  in  an  underground  dungeon  with  an  iron 
collar  about  his  neck. 

The  government  feared  to  execute  the  law  of  Islam, 
that  apostates  must  be  put  to  death,  knowing  that  if 
this  were  done  openly,  it  would  help  Mirza  Ibrahim's 
cause  by  letting  all  the  people  know  that  an  intelligent 
Moslem  had  rejected  Islam  and  become  a  Christian. 
So  he  was  slowly  abused  to  death,  and  then,  the  Mos- 
lems refusing  him  burial,  was  buried  by  night  by  some 
Christians  in  the  grave  of  a  rich  Moslem  whose  body 
had  been  removed  to  another  burying-ground.  Like 
his  Master,  he  made  his  grave  with  the  rich,  as,  like 
his  Master,  he  had  fearlessly  borne  witness  to  the 
truth  by  his  life  and  his  death. 

Heroisms  !  Missionary  lives  are  full  of  them.  Daily 
we  bow  gratefully  before  God  for  the  privilege  of 
having  a  part  in  a  work  so  full  of  them. 


XXXV 

LI  HUNG  CHANG  AND  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS 

IT  is  not  possible  to  believe  that  Li  Hung  Chang 
did  not  truly  desire  the  improvement  of  his  coun- 
try. He  was  entitled,  of  course,  to  form  his  own 
judgment  of  what  would  be  good  and  what  evil, 
and  he  was  right  in  thinking  of  China  first,  and  for- 
eign powers  second;  but  that  he  was  also  earnest  in 
desiring  to  see  China  awakened  from  her  lethargy  and 
death,  and  adopting  so  much  of  Western  civilization 
as  would  fit  her  for  self-defence  in  commerce  and  in 
war,  we  must  believe.  Furthermore,  it  is  not  possible 
to  discredit  his  expressions  of  appreciation  of  the  work 
of  Christian  missions  in  helping  his  countrymen. 

This  appreciation  was  not  a  recent  thing.  It  was  in 
1879  t^^'^t  he  became  interested  in  Dr.  Mackenzie  of 
the  London  Missionary  Society,  through  the  cure  of 
his  wife  under  Dr.  Mackenzie's  care ;  and  he  not  only 
gave  liberally  to  Dr.  Mackenzie's  medical  work,  but 
he  aided  in  establishing  a  medical  school,  urged  the 
starting  of  a  vaccine  establishment,  and  seemed  to 
understand,  as  Mackenzie  thought,  "  the  purpose  and 
object  of  the  missionary's  life;  "  and  he  adds,  "  In  giv- 
ing me  the  free  use  of  his  name,  and  taking  upon  him- 
self the  support  of  the  work,  His  Excellency  knows 
I  am  a  Christian  missionary  and  will  make  use  of  every 
opportunity  for  the  furtherance  of  the  gospel." 

About  the  same  time  that  Li  Hung  Chang  was  be- 
coming interested  in  medical  missions,  he  gained  a  new 
insight  into  the  charitable  spirit  of  the  missionary  work 
as  he  saw  it  relieving  the  sufferings  of  thousands  of 
starving   Chinese   in   the   great    famines   of    1876-78. 

406 


Li  Hung  Chang  and  Christian  Missions   407 

How  he  felt  toward  the  missionaries  and  others  who 
had  contributed  to  the  reHef  of  the  suffering  was  in- 
dicated in  the  letter  sent,  at  Li  Hung  Chang's  instruc- 
tion, by  the  Chinese  minister  in  London  to  Lord  SaHs- 
bury,  on  October  14,  1878: 

"  The  noble  philanthropy  which  heard,  in  a  far- 
distant  country,  the  cry  of  suffering,  and  hastened  to 
its  assistance,  is  too  signal  a  recognition  of  the  com- 
mon brotherhood  of  humanity  ever  to  be  forgotten,  and 
is  not  a  mere  passing  response  to  a  generous  emotion, 
but  a*  continued  effort,  persevered  in,  until,  in  sending 
the  welcome  rain.  Heaven  gave  the  assuring  promise 
of  returning  plenty,  and '  the  sign  that  the  brotherly 
succour  was  no  longer  required." 

This  letter  closed  with  an  expression  of  gratitude 
to  "  the  various  missionary  societies  who  inaugurated 
the  China  Famine  Fund." 

In  many  ways  the  great  Viceroy  has  expressed  his 
sympathy  with  the  missionaries.  He  had  an  excep- 
tional opportunity  for  doing  this  when  he  visited  the 
United  States  in  1896,  and  received  a  deputation  from 
the  American  Missionary  Societies  at  the  Hotel  Wal- 
dorf on  September  i.  In  behalf  of  the  societies  an  ad- 
dress was  presented  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  F.  F.  Ellinwood, 
and,  after  it  had  been  read,  the  Viceroy's  reply  was, 
through  his  interpreter: 

Gentlemen :  It  affords  me  great  pleasure  to  ac- 
knowledge the  grateful  welcome  to  this  country  offered 
to  me  by  you  as  the  representatives  of  the  various 
boards  and  societies  who  have  engaged  in  China  in 
exchanging  our  ideas  of  the  greatest  of  all  truths  which 
concern  the  immortal  destinies  of  men. 

In  the  name  of  my  August  Master,  the  Emperor 
of  China,  I  beg  to  tender  to  you  his  best  thanks  for 
your  approval  and  appreciation  for  the  protection 
afforded  to  the  American  missionaries  in  China.    What 


4o8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

wc  have  done, — and  how  Httle  we  have  done  on  our 
part ! — is  nothing  but  the  duty  of  our  government, 
while  the  missionaries,  as  you  have  so  ably  expressed, 
have  not  sought  for  pecuniary  gains  at  the  hands  of 
our  people.  They  have  not  been  secret  emissaries  of 
diplomatic  schemes.  Their  labours  have  no  political 
significance,  and  the  last,  not  the  least,  if  I  might  be  per- 
mitted to  add,  they  have  not  interfered  with  or  usurped 
the  rights  of  the  territorial  authorities. 

In  a  philosophical  point  of  view,  as  far  as  I  have 
been  enabled  to  appreciate,  Christianity  does  not  differ 
nnich  from  Confucianism,  as  the  Golden  Rule  is  ex- 
pressed in  a  positive  form  in  one  while  it  is  expressed  in 
the  negative  form  in  the  other.  Logically  speaking, 
whether  these  two  forms  of  expressing  the  same 
truth  cover  exactly  the  same  ground  or  not,  I  leave 
to  the  investigations  of  those  who  have  more  philo- 
sophical tastes.  It  is,  at  the  present,  enough  to  conclude 
that  there  exists  not  much  difference  between  the  wise 
sayings  of  the  two  greatest  teachers,  on  the  foundations 
of  which  the  whole  structure  of  the  two  systems  of 
morality  is  built.  As  man  is  composed  of  soul,  intel- 
lect, and  body,  I  highly  appreciate  that  your  eminent 
Boards,  in  your  arduous  and  much  esteemed  work  in 
the  field  of  China,  have  neglected  none  of  the  three. 
I  need  not  say  much  about  the  first,  being  an  unknow- 
able mystery  of  which  our  greatest  Confucius  had  only 
an  active  knowledge.  As  for  intellect,  you  have  started 
numerous  educational  establishments  which  have  served 
as  the  best  means  to  enable  our  countrymen  to  acquire 
a  fair  knowledge  of  the  modern  arts  and  sciences  of 
the  West.  As  for  the  material  part  of  our  constitution, 
your  societies  have  started  hospitals  and  dispensaries 
to  save  not  only  the  souls,  but  also  the  bodies,  of  our 
countrymen.  I  have  also  to  add  that  in  the  time  of 
famine,  in  some  of  the  provinces,  you  have  done  your 
best  to  the  greatest  number  of  the  sufferers  to  keep 
their  bodies  and  souls  together. 

Before  I  bring  my  reply  to  a  conclusion  I  have  only 
two  things  to  mention. 

The  first,  the  opium  smoking,  being  a  great  curse 
to  the  Chinese  population,  your  societies  have  tried 


Li  Hung  Chang  and  Christian  Missions  409 

your  best  not  only  as  anti-opium  societies,  but  to  afford 
the  best  means  to  stop  the  craving  for  the  opium ;  and 
also  you  receive  none  as  your  converts  who  are  opium 
smokers. 

I  have  to  tender,  in  my  own  name,  my  best  thanks 
for  your  most  effective  prayers  to  God  to  spare  my 
life  when  it  was  imperilled  by  the  assassin's  bullet,  and 
for  your  most  kind  wishes  which  you  have  just  now 
so  ably  expressed  in  the  interests  of  my  sovereign,  my 
country  and  people. 

Dr.  Wells,  president  of  the  Presbyterian  Board,  who 
was  present  at  this  meeting,  and  whose  white  beard  and 
venerable  appearance  attracted  the  Viceroy's  attention, 
was  asked  by  the  latter,  "  How  old  are  you  ?  "  and  on 
replying,  "  Eighty-one,"  the  Viceroy  responded,  "  God 
has  kept  you,  may  He  keep  you  still !  " 

At  the  close  of  the  presentation  the  Viceroy  asked 
Dr.  Ellinwood,  "  How  many  boards  and  societies  are 
there  in  China  from  America  ?  " 

Dr.  Ellinwood :  "  Eleven ;  but  we  represent  about 
eight  millions  of  people." 

The  Viceroy  :  "  They  are  all  represented  here  ?  " 

Dr.  Ellinwood  :  "  Yes." 

The  Viceroy :  "  You  will  be  good  enough  to  convey 
the  Viceroy's  thanks  to  all  those  people.  The  Vice- 
roy fully  appreciates  the  philanthropic  object  you  have 
in  view." 

At  the  close,  while  the  representatives  of  the  mis- 
sions were  already  beginning  to  disperse,  the  Viceroy 
again  spoke  to  Dr.  Ellinwood,  laying  his  hand  upon 
his  arm,  saying :  "  I  greatly  appreciate  the  kind  ex- 
pressions which  you  gentlemen  have  made  to  me,  and 
especially  your  kind  wishes  for  my  safe  return  to  my 
home."  This  added  expression  was  evidently  heart- 
felt. 


4IO       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

The  memory  of  this  meeting  remained  with  Li  Hung 
Chang.  In  tlie  following  spring  he  gave  to  the  Rev. 
Gilbert  Reid  a  letter  of  approval  of  his  special  mis- 
sionary work,  in  which  he  recalled  his  American 
friends,  and  also  spoke  of  his  hope  that  China  might 
be  willing  to  receive  some  of  the  light  that  was  pour- 
ing from  the  West. 

"  It  is  unfortunately  true,"  he  wrote,  "  that  sus- 
picion, prejudice,  and  self-sufficiency  are  peculiar  traits 
of  educated  Chinese,  especially  noticeable  in  their  esti- 
mation of  other  countries, — perhaps  because  of  the  iso- 
lation of  China  from  Western  influence  for  so  many 
centuries ;  but,  whatever  may  be  the  cause,  lamentable 
effect  is  seen  in  the  present  backward  state  of  China 
among  the  nations  of  the  world. 

"  The  social,  educational,  and  official  systems  of 
China,  have  tended  to  give  to  the  educated  class  con- 
trol of  the  destinies  of  the  nation.  Whether  such  a 
monopoly  of  power  be  good  or  bad,  need  not  now  be 
considered ;  it  exists,  and  the  practical  question  is,  how 
to  turn  it  into  beneficent  and  useful  channels.  .  . 
Unquestionably,  if  you  can  give  to  the  blind  leaders 
of  our  people  light  and  learning  enjoyed  in  the  West, 
they,  in  turn,  will  lead  our  people  out  of  their  dark- 
ness. I  think  I  mav  claim  to  have  many  friends  in 
the  United  States,  where  you  now  go.  The  cordial 
reception  I  met  with  wherever  I  went  there  made  a 
deep  impression  upon  my  heart,  and  has  greatly  en- 
deared your  people  to  me.  If  it  would  interest  them 
to  know  that  I  regard  you  highly,  and  give  you  a 
helping  hand  in  your  future  efforts  to  bring  more  light 
into  the  w^orld  and  encourage  higher  aitns  for  human 
aspirations,  you  may  use  for  that  purpose  this  letter 
from  Your  friend, 

"  Li  Hung  Chang, 

"  Senior  Guardian  of  the  Heir- Apparent ;  Clas- 
sical Reader  of  His  Majesty  the  Emperor; 
Senior  Grand  Secretary  of  State ;  Minister  of 
the  Foreign  Office,  and  Earl  of  the  First  Rank." 


Li  Hung  Chang  and  Christian  Missions   411 

During-  the  Boxer  troubles  in  China  the  great  Viceroy 
was  not  unnaturally  bitter  against  the  West,  and  it 
would  not  have  been  surprising  if  he  had,  in  his  gen- 
eral anger,  spoken  harshly  of  the  missionaries  too. 
But  his  judgments  were  in  the  main  just  to  them,  as 
I  have  already  pointed  out. 

And  now  the  great  man  is  gone,  and  his  people 
burned  their  foolish  paper  images  about  his  house,  to 
supply  his  spirit  with  all  things  necessary  to  its  com- 
fort in  the  unknown  world  to  which  it  has  gone. 
Doubtless  he  himself  would  have  wished  to  have  it 
so.  With  all  his  enlightenment  he  was  a  Chinese  still. 
The  standards  of  his  life  were  the  standards  of  China, 
and  he  would  not  have  wished  to  be  separated  from 
his  people  in  the  manner  of  his  death  and  burial.  He 
has  won  his  rest  at  last,  after  a  full  and  distinguished 
life,  and  if  he  never  really  sympathized  with  or  under- 
stood, the  religious  significance  of  Christian  missions, 
he  at  least  appreciated  their  noble  spirit  of  unselfish- 
ness and  kindness,  and  gave  to  his  appreciation  more 
than  one  expression  that  we  must  believe  was  sincere. 


XXXVI 


THE  CIVILIZING  INFLUENCE  OF  MISSIONS 


I 


t  C  "f  T  seems  to  me  a  great  truth,"  said  Carlyle,  "  that 
human  things  cannot  stand  on  selfishness, 
mechanical  utilities,  economics  and  law  courts ; 
that  if  there  be  not  a  religious  element  in  the 
relations  of  men,  such  relations  are  miserable  and 
doomed  to  ruin."  In  his  Farewell  Address  to  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States,  George  Washington  declared 
the  same  truth :  "  Of  all  the  dispositions  and  habits 
which  lead  to  political  morality,  Religion  and  Worship 
are  indispensable  supports."  It. is  impossible  that  re- 
ligion should  fail  to  exercise  the  profoundest  influence 
upon  institutions  and  upon  individual  life  in  the  West- 
ern nations.  Its  place  is  even  more  conspicuous  in 
Africa  and  the  East.  There  everything  is  bound  up 
with  it,  government,  commerce,  social  intercourse, 
architecture  and  industry.  Whatever  affects  the  re- 
ligion of  these  peoples  touches  their  life  in  every  aspect 
of  it.  This  is  not  always  perceived  by  either  the  sup- 
porters or  the  critics  of  foreign  missions,  but  it  is  true 
nevertheless,  and  it  explains  the  immense  influence 
exerted  by  missions  in  other  directions  than  that  of  the 
direct  evangelization  which  is  their  chief  concern. 

No  other  movement  has  accomplished  anything  like 
the  proportionate  results  effected  by  missions  in  pacify- 
ing and  civilizing  the  lower  races.  "  During  the  pres- 
ent century,"  wrote  General  J.  W.  Phelps,  prior  to 
Madagascar's  absorption  by  France.  "  and  chiefly 
through  missionary  agency,  Madagascar  has  passed 
from  a  state  of  pagan  barbarism  to  one  of  Christian 
civilization  in  which  it  has  entered  and  taken  a  stand 

412 


The  Civilizing  Influence  of  Missions     413 

among  the  Christian  nations  of  the  world."  "  The 
missionaries  have  much  to  be  proud  of  in  this  coun- 
try," wrote  A.  R.  Wallace  of  the  Celebes,  in  The  Malay 
Archipelago.  "  They  have  assisted  the  Government  in 
changing  a  savage  into  a  civilized  community  in  a 
wonderfully  short  space  of  time.  Forty  years  ago  the 
country  was  a  wilderness,  the  people  naked  savages, 
garnishing  their  rude  homes  with  human  hands.  Now 
it  is  a  garden."  Karl  Ritter,  the  great  geographer, 
called  the  extinction  of  cannibalism  and  the  social 
progress  of  missions  in  New  Zealand,  "  the  standing 
miracle  of  the  age."  While  Darwin  said  of  the  change 
wrought  in  the  island,  "  The  lesson  of  the  missionary 
is  the  magician's  wand."  It  was  of  the  social  changes 
wrought  in  Terra  del  Fuego  by  the  missionaries,  that 
Darwin  wrote  his  oft  quoted  testimony  to  the  South 
American  Missionary  Society :  "  The  success  of  the 
Terra  del  Fuego  Mission  is  most  wonderful  and 
charms  me,  as  I  always  prophesied  utter  failure.  It 
is  a  grand  success.  I  shall  feel  proud  if  your  Com- 
mittee think  fit  to  elect  me  an  honourary  member  of 
your  Society." 

By  such  influences  missions  have  aided  governments, 
and  established  and  maintained  order.  "  Christianity 
continues  to  spread  among  the  Karens,"  said  the  Ad- 
ministration Report  for  British  Burmah  for  1 880-1 881, 
"  to  the  great  advantage  of  the  Commonwealth,  and 
the  Christian  Karen  communities  are  distinctly  more 
industrious,  better  educated  and  more  law-abiding  than 
the  Burman  and  Karen  villages  around  them.  The 
Karen  race  and  the  British  government  owe  a  great 
debt  to  the  American  missionaries  who  have,  under 
Providence,  wrought  this  change  among  the  Karens 
of  Burmah.  At  the  outset  of  missionary  work  in 
India,   Schwartz   had  illustrated   this  power  of  mis- 


414        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sions,  commanding  the  confidence  of  the  people,  and 
securing  peace  and  order  where  the  East  India  Com- 
pany and  the  native  rulers  themselves  were  helpless. 
"  Send  me  none  of  your  agents,"  Hyder  Ali  said  to  the 
Company  in  some  of  their  negotiations.  "  Send  me 
the  Christian  missionary,  Schwartz  and  I  will  receive 
him."  A  hundred  years  later,  missionaries  secured 
food  for  British  troops  during  the  Mutiny  in  districts 
which  refused  to  provide  it  save  at  the  missionary's 
solicitation.  And  to-day  in  India  practically  the  only 
truly  loyal  section  of  the  population  is  the  native 
Church.  Lord  Palmerston  saw  this  in  his  day,  as  did 
Sir  Charles  Wood,  later  Viscount  Halifax. 

Missions  have  introduced  the  agencies  of  civilization 
among  more  than  the  savage  races.  Sir  William 
Hunter  says  of  the  little  band  of  missionaries  at  Ser- 
ampore,  made  up  of  Carey,  Marshman  and  Ward, 
"  They  created  a  prose  vernacular  literature  for  Ben- 
gal ;  they  established  the  modern  method  of  popular 
education  .  .  .  they  gave  the  first  great  impulse 
to  the  native  Press ;  they  set  up  the  first  steam  engine 
in  India,  with  its  help  they  introduced  the  manufacture 
of  paper  on  a  large  scale ;  in  ten  years  they  translated 
and  printed  the  Bible  or  parts  thereof  in  thirty-one 
languages."  In  China,  the  development  of  printing 
from  movable  type  has  been  due  almost  wholly  to 
the  missionaries.  The  first  matrices  for  casting 
metallic  type  were  made  by  a  typographer  for  the 
Royal  Printing  Establishment  of  France,  the  British 
Museum  and  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign  Mis- 
sions, at  a  cost  of  $6,600  each,  the  Presbyterian  Board, 
though  poor,  making  sacrifices  to  prevent  the  failure 
of  the  project,  which  required  three  orders  before  the 
matrices  could  be  made.  Practically  all  the  fonts  of 
Chinese  type  now  in  use  can  be  traced  back  to  the 


The  Civilizing  Influence  of  Missions     415 

Presbyterian  Mission  Press  in  Shanghai;  while  mis- 
sionaries have  introduced  vegetables  into  Persia,  fruits 
into  China,  sewing  machines  and  quinine  into  Korea, 
and  Western  products  into  almost  every  country  on 
the  globe.  The  itinerant  watchmakers  and  clock  re- 
pairers of  China,  it  is  said,  are  almost  all  Roman 
Catholic  Christians. 

The  missionaries  are  the  greatest  of  the  pioneer 
agencies  opening  the  world  and  bringing  the  knowl- 
edge of  it  to  the  civilized  nations.  "  We  owe  it  to  our 
missionaries  "  said  the  London  Times,  "  that  the  whole 
region  (of  South  Africa)  has  been  opened  up."  In- 
deed, the  one  name  which  towers  over  all  others  in 
African  explorations  is  David  Livingstone's.  "  In  the 
annals  of  exploration  of  the  dark  continent "  said 
Stanley,  "  we  look  in  vain  among  other  nationalities 
for  such  a  name  as  Livingstone's."  "  Religion,  com- 
merce and  scientific  zeal,"  said  Professor  Whitney  of 
Yale,  "  rival  one  another  in  bringing  new  regions  and 
peoples  to  light,  and  in  uncovering  the  long  buried 
remains  of  others  lost  or  decayed;  and  of  the  three 
the  first  is  the  most  prevailing  and  effective."  In  his 
book  on  The  Languages  of  Africa,  Dr.  Cust  speaks  of 
"  the  wonderful,  unexpected  and  epoch-making  results 
of  their  (the  missionaries')  quiet  labour."  "  Their 
contributions  to  history,  to  ethnology,  to  philosophy, 
to  geography  and  to  religious  literature  "  says  a  Smith- 
sonian publication,  "  form  a  lasting  monument  to  their 
fame."  As  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston  says,  "  Indirectly, 
and  almost  unintentionally,  missionary  enterprise  has 
widely  increased  the  bounds  of  our  knowledge,  and  has 
sometimes  been  the  means  of  conferring  benefits  on 
science,  the  value  and  extent  of  which,  it  is  difficult 
for  us  to  appreciate  and  compute.  Huge  is  the  debt 
which  philologists  owe  to  the  labours  of  British  mis- 


41 6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

sionaries  in  Africa !  By  evangelists  of  our  own  nation- 
ality nearly  two  hundred  African  languages  and  dia- 
lects have  been  illustrated  by  grammars,  dictionaries, 
vocabularies  and  translations  of  the  Bible.  Many  of 
these  tongues  were  on  the  point  of  extinction,  and 
have  since  become  extinct,  and  we  owe  our  knowledge 
of  them  solely  to  the  missionaries'  intervention.  Zool- 
ogy, botany,  and  anthropology,  and  most  of  the  other 
branches  of  scientific  investigation  have  been  enriched 
by  the  researches  of  missionaries  who  have  enjoyed 
unequalled  opportunities  of  collecting  in  new  districts ; 
while  commerce  and  colonization  have  been  notoriously 
guided  in  their  extension  by  the  information  derived 
from  patriotic  emissaries  of  Christianity." 

All  this  appeals  less  to  the  modern  commercial  judg- 
ment than  the  actual  work  of  missions  in  promoting 
trade.  They  have  done  this  in  various  ways.  They 
have  stopped  war  so  as  to  allow  the  energies  it  con- 
sumed to  engage  in  trade.  "  To  be  welcomed  in 
the  land  of  cannibals,"  said  a  Dutch  traveller  in  Su- 
matra, Lunbing  Hirum  "  by  children  singing  hymns, 
this  indeed  shows  the  peace-creating  power  of  the 
gospel."  "The  benefits"  (of  the  missionary  work 
in  New  Guinea),  said  Hugh  Milman,  a  magistrate, 
"  are  immense ;  inter-tribal  fights  formerly  so  common, 
being  entirely  at  an  end,  and  trading  and  communica- 
tion, one  tribe  with  another,  now  being  carried  on 
without  fear."  The  successful  war  which  missions  and 
philanthropy  waged  against  the  slave  trade  in  Africa 
was  of  incalculable  advantage  to  commerce  in  saving 
the  honest  trade  of  great  areas  from  total  destruction. 
Missionaries  have  taught  trades,  developed  industries, 
created  wants,  and  the  results  have  been  pure  gain  to 
commerce.  "  It  is  they,"  says  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  in 
British  Central  Africa,  "  who  in  many  cases  have  first 


The  Civilizing  Influence  of  Missions     417 

taught  the  natives  carpentry,  joinery,  masonry,  tailor- 
ing, cobbling,  engineering,  bookkeeping,  printing,  and 
European  cookery;  to  say  nothing  of  reading,  writing, 
arithmetic,  and  a  smattering  of  general  knowledge. 
Almost  invariably,  it  has  been  to  missionaries  that 
the  natives  of  Interior  Africa  have  owed  their  first 
acquaintance  with  a  printing  press,  the  turning-lathe, 
the  mangle,  the  flat-iron,  the  sawmill,  and  the  brick 
mould.  Industrial  teaching  is  coming  more  and  more 
in  favour,  and  its  immediate  results  in  British  Central 
Africa  have  been  most  encouraging.  Instead  of  im- 
porting painters,  carpenters,  store  clerks,  cooks,  tele- 
graphists, gardeners,  natural  history  collectors  from 
England  or  India,  we  are  gradually  becoming  able  to 
obtain  them  amongst  the  natives  of  the  country,  who 
are  trained  in  the  missionaries'  schools,  and  'who 
having  been  given  simple,  wholesome  local  education, 
have  not  had  their  heads  turned,  and  are  not  above 
their  station  in  life." 

Furthermore,  missionaries  have  been  a  conciliatory 
influence  again  and  again,  and  have  allayed  hostility 
which  diplomats  and  traders  have  aroused.  They  did 
this  in  Japan.  The  Jiji  Shimpo  one  of  the  leading 
newspapers  in  Japan,  speaks  of  this  in  advocating 
the  sending  of  Buddhist  missionaries  to  Korea.  "  Jap- 
anese visiting  Korea  will  be  chiefly  bent  upon  the  pur- 
suit of  gain  and  will  not  be  disposed  to  pay  much  at- 
tention to  the  sentiments  and  customs  of  the  Koreans 
or  to  allow  their  spirit  to  be  controlled  by  any  consid- 
eration of  the  country  or  the  people.  That  was  the 
case  with  foreigners  in  the  early  days  of  Japan's  inter- 
course with  them,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  many 
serious  troubles  would  have  occurred  had  not  the 
Christian  missionary  acted  as  a  counterbalancing  in- 
fluence.    The  Christian  missionary  not  only   showed 


41 8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  the  Japanese  the  altruistic  side  of  the  Occidental 
character,  but  also  by  his  teaching  and  his  preaching 
imparted  a  new  and  attractive  aspect  to  intercourse 
which  would  otherwise  have  seemed  masterful  and  re- 
pcllant.  The  Japanese  cannot  thank  the  Christian 
missionary  too  much  for  the  admirable  leaven  that  he 
introduced  into  their  relations  with  foreigners,  nor 
can  they  do  better  than  follow  the  example  that  he 
has  set,  in  their  own  intercourse  with  the  Koreans." 

And  missionaries  in  the  same  conciUatory  spirit 
have  opened  by  treaty  some  sealed  lands  to  Western 
intercourse  and  trade.  The  United  States  Govern- 
ment's treaty  with  Siam  was  negotiated  in  1856,  and 
Dr.  Wood  of  the  Embassy,  wrote  that  "  the  unselfish 
kindness  of  the  American  missionaries,  their  patience, 
sincerity  and  faithfulness,  have  won  the  confidence 
and  esteem  of  the  natives,  and  in  some  degree  trans- 
ferred those  sentiments  to  the  nation  represented  by 
the  missionary  and  prepared  the  way  for  the  free  and 
national  intercourse  now  commencing.  It  was  very 
evident  that  much  of  the  apprehension  they  felt  in 
taking  upon  themselves  the  responsibilities  of  a  treaty 
with  us  would  be  diminished  if  they  could  have  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Mattoon  as  the  first  United  States  Consul 
to  set  the  treaty  in  motion."  In  1871,  the  Regent  of 
Siam  frankly  told  Mr.  Seward  the  United  States  Con- 
sul-General  at  Shanghai,  "  Siam  has  not  been  disci- 
plined by  English  and  French  guns  as  China  has,  but 
the  country  has  been  opened  by  missionaries."  The 
great  districts  of  Uganda  and  Nyassa  in  Africa  were 
practically  secured  to  Great  Britain  by  the  mission- 
aries of  the  Church  of  England  and  the  Scotch  Pres- 
byterians. When  the  East  Africa  Company  was  on 
the  point  of  giving  up  Uganda,  which  would  probably 
have  involved  its  loss  to  Great  Britain,  the  Church 


The  Civilizing  Influence  of  Missions     419 

Missionary  Society  raised  £15,000  of  the  £40,000  needed 
to  maintain  the  Company's  hold  for  one  more  year 
until  the  British  Government  could  be  induced  to  take 
it  over.  Of  the  work  of  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  in 
Nyassa  land,  Joseph  Thomson,  the  traveller,  bore  testi- 
mony after  his  visit  in  1879.  "  Where  international 
effort  has  failed,"  he  said,  "  an  unassuming  Mission, 
supported  only  by  a  small  section  of  the  British  people, 
has  been  quietly  and  unostentatiously,  but  most  suc- 
cessfully realizing  in  its  own  district  the  entire  pro- 
gramme of  the  Brussels  Conference.  I  refer  to  the 
Livingstonia  Mission  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scot- 
land. This  Mission  has  proved  itself,  in  every  sense 
of  the  word,  a  civilizing  centre.  By  it  slavery  has 
been  stopped,  desolating  wars  put  an  end  to,  and  peace 
and  security  given  to  a  wide  area  of  the  country." 

Let  any  one  who  doubts  the  influence  of  missions 
in  moulding  the  social  life,  in  affecting  institutions, 
in  establishing  trade,  in  creating  and  fostering  indus- 
tries, in  making  producers  and  consumers  and  so  de- 
veloping commerce,  turn  to  the  second  volume  of  Dr. 
Dennis's  Christian  Missions  and  Social  Progress,  and 
read  there  of  the  achievements  of  mission  work  in  these 
subordinate  and  secondary  spheres,  and  he  will  gain 
a  new  conception  of  the  power  and  value  of  foreign 
missions.  As  Dr.  Dennis  shows,  they  have  promoted 
temperance,  opposed  the  liquor  and  opium  traffics 
which  are  fatal  to  wise  commerce,  checked  gambling, 
established  higher  standards  of  personal  purity,  culti- 
vated industry  and  frugality,  elevated  woman. 
restrained  anti-social  customs  such  as  polygamy,  con- 
cubinage, adultery  and  child-marriage  and  infanticide', 
fostered  the  suppression  of  the  slave  trade  and  slav  ■ 
traffic,  abolished  cannibalism  and  human  sacrifice  and 
cruelty,  organized  famine  relief,  improved  husbandry 


420       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  agriculture,  introduced  Western  medicines  and 
medical  science,  founded  leper  asylums  and  colonies, 
promoted  cleanliness  and  sanitation,  and  checked  war. 
"  Whatever  you  may  be  told  to  the  contrary,"  said  Sir 
Bartle  Frere,  formerly  Governor  of  Bombay,  "  the 
teaching  of  Christianity  among  irxD,ooo,ooo  of  civilized, 
industrious  Hindus  and  Mohammedans  in  India  is 
effecting  changes,  moral,  social  and  political,  which  for 
extent  and  rapidity  of  efifect  are  far  more  extraor- 
dinary than  anything  that  you  or  your  fathers  have 
witnessed  in  modern  Europe."  "  When  the  history  of 
the  great  African  States  of  the  future  comes  to  be 
written,"  says  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston  "  the  arrival  of  the 
first  missionary  will  with  many  of  these  new  nations 
be  the  first  historical  event  in  their  annals. 

No  friend  of  mankind  can  remain  indifferent  to  a 
movement  like  this.  The  love  of  man  as  well  as  the 
love  of  God  requires  us  to  sympathize  with  it  and  to 
give  it  support. 


XXXVII 

THE  PROPAGATION    OF  CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE 
LAST  CENTURY 

THE  last  century  was  marked  by  more  mission- 
ary spirit  and  a  wider  propagation  of  Christ- 
tianity  than  liave  marked  any  other  age  of  the 
Church,  not  excepting  the  apostolic  generation. 
In  the  number  of  missionaries  who  have  gone  forth, 
in  the  gifts  for  their  support,  in  the  organized  effort 
to  evangelize  the  world,  the  century  represents  as 
much  energy  and  activity,  perhaps,  as  all  the  preced- 
ing centuries  combined.  And  the  vast  enterprise  of 
missions,  as  we  know  it  now,  has  practically  been  a  de- 
velopment of  the  hundred  years  just  rounded  to  a 
close. 

The  whole  attitude  of  the  Christian  Church  toward 
the  missionary  project  has  changed  during  the  cen- 
tury. It  began  with  apathy  and  indifference,  or  even 
antagonism  and  bitterness.  The  official  discourage- 
ment of  Carey  is  historic.  And  it  was  only  typical  of 
the  temperament  of  the  time.  George  Hamilton  op- 
posed a  missionary  overture  in  the  Church  of  Scotland 
General  Assembly.  And  even  after  John  Erskine's 
famous  reply,  beginning  "  Moderator,  Rax  me  that 
Bible,"  Alexander  Carlyle  rose  to  support  Hamilton, 
and  said  :  **  It  would  be  highly  absurd  to  think  of  mak- 
ing distant  converts  by  external  missionaries.  This  is 
the  first  time  I  remember  to  have  ever  heard  such  a 
proposal  made,  and  I  cannot  also  help  thinking  it  the 
worst  time."  Men  talk  such  nonsense  still,  but  not  in 
Church  councils.  The  century  has  seen  the  Christian 
Churches  pass  into  the  axiomatic  conviction  that  they 

421 


422       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

exist  for  missions,  that  they  are  the  organs  of  the  mis- 
sion of  the  universal  love  of  God.  Contrast  Alexander 
Carlyle's  sentiment  with  the  noble  declaration  of  the 
last  Lambeth  Conference,  that  missions  are  "  the  pri- 
mary work  of  the  Church,  the  work  for  which  the 
Christian  Church  was  commissioned  by  our  Lord." 

.\nd  the  century  has  seen  the  mission  movement  not 
only  settled  in  the  deepest  conscience  and  purpose  of 
the  Church,  but  also  vindicated  in  the  judgment  of 
civil  governments.  When,  in  1807,  the  missionary 
press  at  Serampore  issued  "  An  address  to  all  persons 
professing  the  Moslem  faith,"  the  Danish  Governor  of 
Serampore  was  instantly  requested  by  the  Governor 
General  and  Council  of  the  East  India  Company  "  to 
interpose  his  authority  to  prohibit  the  issue  of  any  more 
copies  of  the  pamphlet,  or  of  any  publications  of  a 
similar  description."  Shortly  after,  the  British  Govern- 
ment issued  an  order  forbidding  preaching,  and  pro- 
hibiting the  missionaries  from  printing  any  books  "  di- 
rected to  the  object  of  converting  the  natives  to  Chris- 
tianity." And  the  resolutions  of  the  Supreme  Council 
to  this  end  were  justified  on  the  ground  that  "  the  ob- 
ligations to  suppress,  within  the  limits  of  the  Com- 
pany's authority  in  India,  treatises  and  public  preach- 
ings oflFensive  to  the  religious  persuasions  of  the  peo- 
ple, were  founded  on  considerations  of  necessary  cau- 
tion, general  safety,  and  national  faith  and  honour." 
Such  reasoning  sounds  unintelligible  to  us,  yet  it  was 
the  common  speech  of  governments  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century.  Compare  this  with  the  words  of 
Palmerston  when  Prime  Minister  in  the  middle  of  the 
century :  "  It  is  not  only  our  duty,  but  it  is  our  interest 
to  promote  the  diffusion  of  Christianity  as  far  as  pos- 
sible throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  India." 
And  the  words  of  Mr.  Gladstone  at  its  close,  when 


Christianity  in  the  Last  Century         423 

he  spoke  of  ''  the  noble  character  and  the  noble  work  " 
of  Alexander  Duff;  of  "the  very  heroic  apostolic" 
Selwyn  and  Patteson,  and  added :  "  They,  at  least, 
have  devoted  all  their  energies  to  diminish  the  lament- 
able sum  total  of  sins  and  sorrows  in  the  world,  and 
done  something  for  their  race  and  for  eternity."  The 
whole  century  lies  between  the  foolish  and  unworthy 
Minute  of  the  Earl  of  Minto  in  181 1,  and  the  declara- 
tion of  the  present  Viceroy,  that  the  spectacle  presented 
by  the  dominion  of  Great  Britain  in  India  is  that  of 
"  British  power  sustained  by  a  Christian  ideal." 

This  remark  of  Lord  Curzon's  illustrates  another 
significant  growth  of  missionary  spirit  during  the  cen- 
tury. At  the  outset  no  Western  nation  felt  called  upon 
to  justify  its  encroachments  on  Asia  or  its  aggrandize- 
ment in  other  pagan  lands  by  arguments  of  altruistic 
purpose,  or  the  claim  that  its  aggressions  were  in  the 
interest  of  civilization.  It  seized  what  it  wished.  It 
plead  no  justification.  It  is  not  so  now.  The  mis- 
sionary argument  and  obligation  have  eaten  into  the 
moral  conscience  of  civilization,  and  no  State  seizes 
territory  from  another  now,  or  benevolently  takes  an- 
other State  under  its  care  without  making  some  de- 
fence on  the  ground  of  missionary  service  of  a  politi- 
cal nature,  or  of  zealous  propagandism  of  the  bless- 
ings of  civilization.  "  The  White  Man's  Burden  "  is 
a  fruit  of  missions.  The  mission  movement  has 
forced  the  Western  political  advance  into  Asia  and 
Africa  to  justify  itself  by  arguments  that  were  not 
dreamed  of  as  necessary  one  hundred  years  ago. 

Sometimes  the  movement  that  has  accomplished  this 
is  sneered  at  as  small  and  inconsequential.  Truly,  it 
is  insignificant  in  comparison  with  what  the  Church 
could  and  should  do,  and  would  do  if  the  mighty  mo- 
tives of  the  Cross  ruled  her  life.     And  it  was  mean 


424       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  humble  in  its  bcg-innincif.  But  one  hundred  years 
have  witnessed  an  unimai^ined  growth.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  century  there  were  perhaps  seven  Prot- 
estant missionary  societies.  Now  there  are  two  hun- 
dred or  more.  Then  there  were  170  missionaries,  of 
whom  100  were  connected  with  the  Moravians.  Now 
there  are  18,000.  Then  there  were,  as  Christlieb  esti- 
mates, about  50,000  converts.  Now  there  are  1,500,000. 
Then  the  total  sum  contributed  annually  for  Protestant 
missions  hardly  amounted  to  £50,000.  Now  it  exceeds 
£3,500,000.  Then  there  were  barely  seventy  Protestant 
missionary  schools.  Now  there  are  scores  of  thousands. 
Then  the  Bible  existed  in  fifty  translations.  Now  in 
more  than  four  hundred  and  fifty. 

The  work  of  missions  has  shown  its  supernatural 
character  by  its  disproportion  to  the  force  which  has 
been  employed.  The  life,  the  energy,  the  money  ex- 
pended in  one  month  of  the  Civil  War  exceeded  all 
that  has  been  devoted  to  missions  during  the  century. 
Yet  the  smaller  sacrifice  has  opened  the  whole  world, 
has  widened  beyond  description  the  stock  of  human 
knowledge,  has  created  more  homes  than  the  whole 
Civil  War  destroyed,  has  dotted  the  heathen  world  with 
school-house  and  church,  has  transformed  Christianity 
at  home  and  redeemed  millions  of  lives  abroad,  and 
shaken  to  their  depths  the  non-Christian  religions. 

A  missionary  coming  back  from  the  first  decade  of 
the  century  into  any  mission  field  would  notice  this  in- 
stantly. The  whole  attitude  of  the  non-Christian  faiths 
toward  Christianity  is  changing.  They  are  discover- 
ing that  they  cannot  meet  Christianity  on  the  ground 
of  their  historic  character  and  they  are  striving  to  post- 
pone the  inevitable  by  stealing  the  weapons  of  Chris- 
tianity and  trying  to  cover  their  nakedness  with  gar- 
ments borrowed  from  the  better  faiths.    Professor  Mu- 


Christianity  in  the  Last  Century  425 

kerji  wrote  recently  in  the  Indian  Evangelical  Review 
of  this  great  change  in  the  reUgious  attitude  of  the 
Hindus  of  Bengal,  to  take  Hinduism  alone  as  an 
illustration  of  all : 

"  Some  people  have  the  notion  that  Hinduism  is  yet 
destined  to  revive  in  Bengal,  and  they  hope  that  the 
next  generation  of  Bengalis  will  not  be  brought  up  in 
that  religious  nescience  in  which  the  present  generation 
is  being  brought  up.  But  where  is  this  leaven  to  come 
from?  I  happen  to  be  acquainted  with  some  of  the 
most  scholarly  pundits  of  Bengal.  They  are  not  in  the 
ranks  of  the  revivalists,  but  they  command  great  re- 
spect among  the  Hindus.  These  pundits  are  utterly  at 
sea  with  regard  to  religion.  They  are  straightforward 
men,  and  they  will  tell  you  in  so  many  words  that  they 
know  nothing  about  God  and  the  future  life.  One  of 
them  told  me  quite  seriously  that  the  whole  Hindu 
system  is  a  mere  social  system,  which  has  no  relation 
whatever  with  God,  or  with  another  world ;  that  ac- 
cording to  Hindu  philosophy  matter  and  force  are  the 
efficient  cause  of  the  universe,  and  that  the  Hindu  re- 
ligion simply  gives  expression  to  various  philosophical 
ideas  in  the  form  of  personifications  or  allegories. 

"  The  common  element,  the  most  hopeful  element 
to  us  Christians,  in  all  the  religious  movement  in  Ben- 
gal, is  this  overt  or  covert  recognition  of  Christianity 
as  the  purest  and  best  of  all  religions.  Raja  Ram  Mo- 
hun  Roy  would  fain  draw  all  the  lessons  of  Christianity 
from  the  Vedas.  Babu  Bankim  Chunder  Chatterji 
would  trace  every  lineament  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  his 
sublimated  and  reformed  Krishna.  Swami  Vivekananda 
and  the  Bengali  Theosophists  would  out-Christian 
Christianity,  though  professing  to  be  guided  only  by 
the  dictates  of  the  Vedanta  and  the  Hindu  Scriptures. 
Swami  Vivekananda  is  our  most  prominent  religious 


4'26       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

reformer  in  Bengal  at  the  present  moment.  I  saw  a 
good  deal  of  his  followers  and  his  methods  of  work  in 
connection  with  the  famine  operations  in  Bengal.  Their 
imitation  of  Christian  methods  is  very  close ;  they  did 
excellent  work  during  the  famine,  and  they  have  been 
since  trying  to  establish  an  orphanage.  They  would 
make  no  difference  between  Hindu  and  Mohammedan 
children.  They  wish  very  much  they  could  get  up  a 
Hindu  nunnery  and  admit  orphan  girls  into  it;  but 
in  this  matter  their  only  hope  lies  in  converting  a  num- 
ber of  Christian  ladies  to  Hinduism,  and  getting  them 
to  conduct  an  orphanage  for  girls." 

And  the  political  institutions  of  heathenism  have 
been  disintegrating  more  rapidly  even  than  its  religious 
institutions.  The  same  century  that  has  witnessed  the 
growth  of  Christianity  and  of  Christian  nations  has 
witnessed  the  decay  of  paganism.  India  has  passed 
wholly  under  control  of  Great  Britain.  China,  Persia, 
Turkey  have  been  crumbling  before  our  eyes,  and  Siam 
with  an  intelligent  king,  the  ablest  statesman  in  China, 
as  Count  Ito  called  him,  and  Korea  with  a  king  who 
cannot  be  so  described,  are  caught  and  crushed  be- 
tween antagonistic  forces  closing  in  on  East  and  West. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  populations  under  Protestant 
governments  have  grown  from  157,000,000  to  500,- 
000,000.  And  these  governments  are  slowly  absorb- 
ing control  over  the  earth,  checked  on  the  North  of 
Europe  and  Asia  alone  by  the  sway  of  the  Greek 
Church  and  the  Czar. 

A  scattered  and  unfamiliar  world  has  found  itself 
during  the  century  that  has  slipped  away.  Its  distant 
and  unacquainted  parts  have  been  introduced  and 
bound  by  indissoluble  bonds.  Ships  and  rails 
and  cables  like  woof  and  warp  tie  and  tie  un- 
tiringly the  peoples  of  the  earth.    We  are  coming  now 


Christianity  in  the  Last  Century  427 

into  a  new,  at  once  a  greater  and  a  smaller  world.  We 
enter  it  with  the  experience  of  a  century  of  missions 
behind  us,  with  resources  multiplied,  incalculable,  with 
a  world  open  and  no  power  to  let  or  stay,  with  a  heri- 
tage of  splendid  service  which  is  the  call  to  larger 
ministry,  with  the  summons  sounding  to  the  toil  of  a 
new  century  to  be  to  the  last  as  a  thousand  years  to 
ten. 


\ 


XXXVIII 

THE   MISSIONARY   SPIRIT    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN 

LIFE 

THERE  are  two  different  opinions  which  a  man 
may  hold  regarding  his  Hfe.  He  may  regar-i 
it  as  belonging  to  himself,  as  something  under 
his  control — and  there  are  few  men  who  have 
not  at  some  time  or  other  in  life  held  that  view.  There 
is  a  time  when  it  seems  inexpressibly  sweet,  when  the 
old  shackles  for  the  first  time  fall  off;  when  the  old 
limitations  for  the  first  time  are  laid  aside;  when  a 
man  for  the  first  time  feels  on  his  brow  the  breath  of 
the  larger  liberty,  and  looking  out  over  his  life  says 
to  it,  "  I  am  thy  master."  The  other  view  of  life 
regards  it  as  belonging  to  somebody  else,  as  not  be- 
longing to  the  man.  This  is  the  view  of  life  which  thi' 
Scriptures  constantly  take.  "  Ye  are  not  your  own,'' 
they  say,  "  ye  were  brought  with  a  price ;  therefore 
glorify  God  in  your  body,  which  is  God's.  Ye  were 
not  redeemed  with  corruptible  things,  such  as  silver  and 
gold,  but  with  the  precious  blood  of  Christ,  as  of  a 
Lamb  without  blemish  and  without  spot."  And  this 
is  the  view  which  a  reasonable  man  must  take  of  his 
life.  He  knows  perfectly  well  it  does  not  belong  to  him- 
self. He  had  nothing  whatever  to  say  about  its  com- 
ing into  this  world ;  he  will  have  nothing  whatever  to 
say  about  its  going  out  of  this  w^orld.  Regarding  a 
good  many  influences  which  control  it,  he  has  nothing 
to  say  while  he  is  in  this  world.  Any  man  who  will 
stop  and  deal  squarely  and  honourably  with  himself  for 
one  moment  will  see  that  his  life  clearly  is  not  his. 
And  this  is  the  view  of  life  which  Jesus  Christ  took  of 
His.     His  life.  He  declared,  was  not  His  own.    The 

428 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    429 

words  that  He  spoke  were  not  His  own  words;  He 
simply  spoke  the  words  that  were  given  Him  by  His 
Father.  The  works  that  He  did  were  not  His  own 
works ;  He  simply  did  the  things  that  His  Father  had 
shown  Him  before  He  came.  He  came  down  from 
heaven,  not  to  do  His  own  will,  but  the  will  of  Him 
that  sent  Him.  And  in  this  He  revealed  the  true 
attitude  of  man  toward  his  life.  I  am  not  my  own, 
]\Iy  life  belongs  to  Christ  as  His  life  belonged  to  God. 

Now,  if  our  lives  belong  to  Christ,  if  my  life  belongs 
to  Christ,  then  it  is  my  business  to  be  of  use  to  Christ 
wherever  in  this  world  I  happen  at  any  time  to  be. 
I  have  no  right  to  serve  myself.  I  have  no  right  to  do 
my  own  pleasure.  I  am  here  to  do  the  works  and  to 
speak  the  words  of  Him  to  whom  I  belong.  My  busi- 
ness is  to  be  of  use  to  Him,  wherever  I  am,  in  this 
world.  I  think  all  of  us  must  have  a  great  deal  of  sym- 
pathy with  that  man  whom  Jesus  healed  in  the  country 
of  the  Gadarenes ;  who  after  he  had  been  healed,  freed 
of  his  devils,  wanted  to  sit  down  at  Christ's  feet  and 
stay  there.  If  I  had  been  he,  that  is  where  I  should 
have  wished  to  sit,  and  it  has  always  seemed  a  hard 
thing  that  Christ  bade  him  go  away.  Yet  He  knew 
perfectly  well  that  the  man's  first  duty  as  one  who 
now  belonged  to  Him  who  had  healed  him  and  had 
spoken  life  to  him,  was  to  go  out  and  be  of  service. 
"  Go  home,"  He  said,  "  to  thine  own  house,  and  tell 
them  how  great  things  the  Lord  hath  done  for  thee." 
The  same  truth  is  taught  by  a  familiar  story  in 
the  life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi.  He  turned 
once  to  one  of  his  younger  monks  in  the  monastery 
where  he  was  living,  asking  him  if  he  would  accom- 
pany him  on  a  little  mission  of  preaching  among  the 
people  of  the  village.  The  young  monk,  elated  at  the 
privilege  of  accompanying  the  good  St.  Francis,  cor- 


430       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

dially  consented.  And  so  arm  in  arm  they  went  down 
out  of  the  monastery,  through  the  wicket  gate, 
down  under  the  hill,  and  through  the  streets  of  the  vil- 
lage. They  passed  by  group  after  group  of  men.  They 
stopped  here  and  there.  St.  Francis  never  opened  his 
lips.  After  going  in  and  out,  they  came  back  at  last 
to  the  little  hill  that  led  up  to  the  monastery.  St. 
Francis  had  not  spoken.  They  climbed  to  the  little 
gate  and  came  to  the  monastery.  The  young  monk 
said,  "  When  shall  we  begin  to  preach  ?  "  "  Ah,"  said 
the  elder  monk,  "  we  have  been  preaching  all  the  way. 
Our  example  was  noted,  marked,  looked  at ;  but  little 
had  it  availed  us  to  go  anywhere  to  preach  if  we 
had  not  preached  as  we  went."  He  understood 
that  in  the  service  of  Christ  the  emphasis  is  ever  on  the 
constant  service,  rather  than  on  the  intermittent  activ- 
ity or  the  occasional  change  of  activity,  or  of  place. 
The  same  truth  exactly  Jesus  phrases  in  the  fifteenth 
verse  of  the  sixteenth  chapter  of  Mark,  which  our 
English  Bibles  translate,  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world 
and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature."  There  are 
not  two  imperatives  there.  Only  one  is  an  imperative, 
and  it  is  the  word  "  preach."  Our  Lord  did  not  lay 
the  obligation  on  the  word  "  go."  He  assumed  that 
those  whom  He  saved  would  go,  but  He  wished  them 
to  be  ever  serving.  It  would  seem  to  be  very  clear  that 
if  a  man  belongs  to  Christ  his  business  is  to  be  of  use 
to  Christ,  wherever  he  may  be.  (, 

And  it  follows,  it  seems  to  me,  with  equal  plainness 
that  if  we  belong  to  Christ,  then  it  is  our  business  to 
be  willing  to  be  of  use  to  Christ  anywhere;  that  our 
sympathies  must  be  as  broad  as  the  sympathies  of 
Christ ;  that  our  hearts  must  go  out  as  widely  as  the 
heart  of  Christ,  and  that  while  we  are  of  use  to  Him 
where  we  are,  we  must  be  ready  to  be  of  use  to  Him 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    431 

in  any  sphere;  if  it  please  Him,  so  much  the  better 
in  the  largest  sphere.  I  think  this  can  be  made  per- 
fectly plain  if  we  will  only  stop  to  think  of  three  dif- 
ferent things.  First  of  all,  the  example,  the  spirit,  and 
the  words  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  If  we  belong  to 
Christ,  then  it  is  our  life's  passion  to  be  like  Christ, 
and  to  do  the  things  that  Christ  told  us  to  do.  What 
was  His  mission?  Pause  for  one  moment  quietly  and 
calmly  to  think  about  it.  It  was  a  missionary  mission 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  He  proclaimed  that 
it  was.  "  I  came  not  to  condemn,  but  to  save  the 
world."  It  was  heralded  before  He  came  as  a  mission- 
ary mission.  Old  Simeon,  as  he  took  the  little  child 
in  his  arms  in  the  temple,  saw  in  Him  that  Light  that 
was  to  lighten  the  Gentiles,  the  Glory  of  His  people 
Israel;  and  those  of  the  evangelists  who  were 
keenest  in  seeing  the  broad  bearings  of  Christ's  com- 
ing in  the  divine  development,  marked  how  this  mis- 
sion of  the  Son  of  man  was  a  missionary  mission.  He 
came,  Matthew  pointed  out,  that  those  who  sat  in 
darkness  might  see  the  great  Light.  He  came  that 
He  might  send  judgment  among  the  Gentiles,  even  the 
distant  isles  waiting  for  His  law.  Our  Lord  Himself 
described  His  mission  as  a  missionary  mission.  The 
love  of  His  Father  for  the  whole  race  of  men.  He  said, 
brought  Him  here.  "  God  so  loved  the  whole  world 
that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever  be- 
Heveth  in  Him  [in  the  whole  world]  might  not  perish, 
but  have  everlasting  life."  His  teaching  was  mission- 
ary teaching.  He  drew  no  line  of  cleavage  between 
the  need  of  Gentle  and  the  need  of  Jew.  His  spirit 
was  a  missionary  spirit.  It  was  part  of  the  necessity  of 
the  incarnation  that  God  should  be  entangled  in  flesh; 
that  He  should  limit  Himself  as  men  must,  with  cer- 
tain limitations  that  were  a  part  of  His  sharing  our 


• 


/■ 


432        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

common  humanity.  But  though  our  Lord  thus  sunk 
Himself  into  flesh,  ?Ie  never  lost  that  wide  spirit  that 
linked  Ilim  with  all  the  children  of  God.  Although 
He  came  in  an  age  when  Greek  was  cut  ofif  from  Bar- 
barian by  the  custom  of  the  time,  and  Jew  from  Gentile 
by  a  caste  line  wider  than  that  between  Brahman  and 
Chudra  or  IMahar,  He  still  absolutely  and  resolutely 
refused  to  acknowledge  or  recognize  racial  or  sectional 
lines.  Many  accused  Him  of  being  possessed  with  a 
devil,  and  also  of  being  a  Samaritan.  He  refused  to 
pay  any  attention  to  the  charge  that  He  was  a  Samari- 
tan. He  knew  perfectly  the  line  of  cleavage  that  sepa- 
rated Samaritan  from  Jew  in  His  day;  that  it  was  not 
lawful  for  a  Jew  to  eat  that  which  a  Samaritan  had 
touched.  But  in  spite  of  that,  many  of  His  best  illustra- 
tions were  selected  from  Samaritan  life.  He  stopped 
by  the  well  side  in  Samaria  to  talk  to  a  woman,  and 
through  all  His  life  He  resolutely  refused  for  one 
moment  to  tolerate  in  His  presence  any  hostile  or 
bigoted  distinction  between  races  or  peoples.  His 
jDrayers  were  missionary  prayers.  The  prayer  that 
He  made  when  the  Greek's  came  up  to  see  Him  at  the 
feast,  the  prayer  He  made  before  the  door  of  Lazarus' 
grave,  were  both  missionary  prayers ;  and  when  in  His 
great  prayer  in  the  seventeenth  chapter  of  John  He  said, 
"  I  pray  not  for  the  world,"  what  was  He  doing  but 
telling  us  with  unmistakable  plainness  that  the  world 
was  the  chief  object  of  His  prayer  at  other  times?  It 
added  but  little  to  the  strength  of  the  missionary  argu- 
ment based  on  Christ's  missionary  spirit  and  Christ's 
missionary  purpose,  that  at  the  end  of  His  life  He 
summed  up  His  desires  in  those  clean-cut  commands 
which  close  the  Gospels.  Lord  Curzon,  in  his  book  on 
Problems  of  the  Far  East,  sneers  at  the  missionary 
enterprise  because,  he  says,  it  rests  on  a  few  detached 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    433 

statements  of  Christ.  If  you  cut  off  the  last  com- 
mands of  Christ  from  the  Gospels  that  recorded  them, 
Christ's  missionary  purpose  would  not  be  less  clear 
than  it  is,  and  Christ's  missionary  desire  for  His  people 
would  not  be  less  distinct.  I  am  very  glad  He  phrased 
that  last  desire  of  His  with  such  unmistakable  plain- 
ness, but  if  He  had  not  phrased  it  so,  He  said  enough. 
He  did  enough,  He  was  enough,  to  make  it  perfectly 
plain  that  any  man  who  calls  himself  His,  and  would 
be  true  to  Him,  and  not  be  hypocritical  in  his  calling, 
must  have  a  sympathy  as  wide  as  His  Lord, — for  the 
other  sheep  not  of  that  Jewish  fold ;  for  the  whole 
world  of  which  He  was  the  light;  for  the  whole 
world,  to  give  to  which  the  living  bread  He  had 
come  down  out  of  heaven.  Therefore  it  seems  to  me 
if  we  really  and  truly  belong  to  Jesus  Christ,  we  must 
desire,  because  of  what  Christ  was,  to  have  hearts 
as  large  and  sympathies  as  wide  as  His.  To  realize 
it  more  clearly,  and  familiar  as  His  last  words 
may  be,  let  us  refresh  our  memories  of  them.  Re- 
call them  in  their  plain,  unmistakable  clearness  as  they 
are  recorded  in  the  last  chapter  of  Matthew's  Gospel, 
spoken  on  the  brow  of  the  mount  in  Galilee.  "  All 
authority  hath  been  given  unto  me  in  heaven  and  on 
earth.  Go  ye,  therefore,  and  make  disciples  of  all  the 
nations,  baptizing  them  into  the  name  of  the  Father 
and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  teaching  them 
to  observe  all  things  whatsoever  I  have  commanded 
you ;  and  lo,  I  am  with  you  all  the  days,  even  unto  the 
end  of  the  age."  Recall  them  as  they  are  written  with 
equally  unmistakable  clearness  in  the  Gospel  of  Mark : 
"  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  to 
every  creature."  Remember  them  as  they  are  written 
in  the  last  chapter  of  Luke's  Gospel :  "  Thus  it  is 
written  and  thus  it  behooved  Christ  to  suffer,  and  to 


434       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

rise  from  the  dead  the  third  day :  and  that  repentance 
and  remission  of  sins  should  be  preached  in  His  name 
among  all  nations,  beginning  from  Jerusalem."  Re- 
call them  as  they  are  written  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Acts :  "  Ye  shall  be  witnesses  to  me,  both  in 
Jerusalem,  and  in  all  Judea,  and  in  Samaria,  and  unto 
the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth."  And  as  the  clouds 
came  rolling  down  to  catch  Him  up  from  the  sight  of 
men,  until  that  day  when  we  shall  see  Him  come  back 
again  in  His  glory,  and  seeing  Him  as  He  is,  shall  be 
like  Him,  the  last  words  that  men  heard  from  His  lips 
were,  "  uttermost  part  of  the  earth ;  uttermost  part  of 
the  earth." 

And  in  the  second  place,  if  we  belong  to  Christ,  our 
hearts  must  feel  for  the  world's  need,  as  Christ's  heart 
felt  for  that  need,  and  we  must  look  out  upon  it  with 
His  eyes,  and  hunger  for  it  with  His  hunger,  and 
long  to  help  it  as  He  longed  to  help  it,  and  was  willing 
for  its  satisfaction  to  lay  down  His  life  on  the  cross. 
It  is  no  easy  matter  to  put  in  a  few  words  the 
mighty  need  of  this  great  world.  Call  one  or 
two  witnesses  to  testify  to  the  world's  wants.  Call 
Keshub  Chundcr  Sen,  one  of  the  great  leaders  in  India 
in  the  last  century,  and  ask  him  for  his  testimony  about 
his  own  land.  In  the  appeal  that  he  issued  to  the 
young  men  of  India,  these  were  his  words :  "  Look 
at  your  social  constitution  and  customs,  the  mass  of 
enervating,  demoralizing,  and  degrading  curses  they 
are  working!  .  .  .  Idolatry  is  the  curse  of  Hin- 
dustan, the  deadly  canker  that  has  eaten  into  the  vitals 
of  native  society."  Call  Kipling,  who  is  no  missionary, 
and  who  calls  India  "  rotten."  These  witnesses  are 
not  suborned  by  Christian  missions.  They  testify 
under  no  constraint. 

Wc  can  look  at  the  world's  need  from  another  point 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    435 

of  view.  Bishop  Thoburn  says  that  there  is  one  tract 
in  his  field  where  there  are  six  millions  of  people  un- 
evangelized.  In  the  Bombay  Presidency  in  the  Mis- 
sion of  the  American  Board,  in  the  district  of 
Satara,  there  are  about  one  million,  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  people  in  a  section  of  five  thousand 
square  miles,  and  until  lately  only  one  man  to  tell 
them  the  story  of  Christ  and  His  love  for  them.  I  saw 
several  years  ago  a  letter  from  a  missionary  located 
in  Northern  India,  in  which  he  wrote : 

"  In  the  Mainpuri  district  there  are  295  towns  with 
from  500  to  1,000  inhabitants;  129  towns  with  from 
1 ,000  to  2,000  inhabitants ;  39  towns  with  from  2,000  to 
3,000  inhabitants;  11  towns  with  from  3,000  to  5,000 
inhabitants ;  6  towns  with  from  5,000  to  10,000  in- 
habitants. In  most  of  these  the  gospel  may  have  been 
preached  two  or  three  times  during  the  last  fifteen  or 
twenty  years,  but  there  are  900  (or  more  exactly  897) 
villages  in  this  district  with  less  than  500  inhabitants 
to  each,  and  how  can  the  gospel  light  shine  in  all  this 
district  and  in  this  multitude  of  crowded  villages  and 
towns,  with  so  few  to  bear  it,  and  with  the  home  board 
ordering  reductions  in  the  estimates  given. 

"  Here  I  am  with  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the 
language,  alone  in  a  district  about  30  miles  square, 
with  801,216  inhabitants  scattered  in  1,379  towns  and 
villages,  Etah  also  under  my  care,  with  1,489  towns, 
etc.,  and  756,523  inhabitants. 

"  Next  to  me  is  Mr.  ,  alone  in  the  district  of 

Farrukhabad,  with  907,608  inhabitants  in  1,723  towns 
and  villages,  and  one  city  of  70,000  inhabitants,  and 
work  enough  for  three  missionaries  at  least,  if  you 
expect  anything  accomplished.  Etawah  district,  with 
668,641  inhabitants  in  1,478  villages,  has  one  man  to 
represent  the  Presbyterian  Church. 


436        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

"  The  Presbyterian  Church  of  America  has  under- 
taken to  give  the  gospel  to  the  two  districts  of  Main- 
puri  and  Etah,  with  a  combined  population  of  1,557,739 
souls  residing-  in  2,868  towns  and  villages.  To  accom- 
plish this  glorious  result  and  to  fulfill  the  Lord's 
command  to  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature,  the 
Presbyterian  Church  of  America  has  stationed  one 
missionary  in  this  great  parish,  and  proposes  to  put 
into  his  hands  for  keeping  up  schools,  employing  help- 
ers, paying  taxes  on  property  and  keeping  it  in  repair, 
distributing  tracts  and  Bibles,  and  for  travelling  ex- 
penses to  superintend  this  great  parish,  the  princely 
sum  of  $2,477.  These  figures  speak  for  themselves. 
The  missionary  asked  for  less  than  one-fifth  cent  each, 
with  which  to  provide  for  preaching  the  gospel  to  a 
parish  of  over  one  million  and  a  half  of  souls  and  he  is 
met  w^ith  the  reply  that  he  must  reduce  his  demands, 
for  the  Church  cannot  afTord  to  give  him  so  much." 

The  conditions  have  changed  since  this  was  written 
but  it  is  still  illustrative. 

You  may  duplicate  such  pictures  as  this  from  many 
mission  fields.  Look  at  the  little  country  of  Colombia, 
to  the  south  of  us,  with  its  4,000,000  people,  and  five 
men — one  to  every  800,000  of  its  population,  to  tell 
the  story  of  Him  in  whom  God  was  reconciling  the 
world  to  Himself.  Dr.  Arthur  Mitchell  used  to  tell 
the  story  of  a  midnight  ride  that  he  took  on 
the  Grand  Canal,  in  China,  when  he  drifted  along 
that  quiet  stream,  and  heard  the  murmur  of  the 
millions  who  lived  along  it,  the  great  majority 
of  whom  had  never  heard  mention  of  the  name 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Here  were  cities  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  people,  no  missionaries  in  them — while  down 
over  them  all  shone  the  same  moon  that  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  ago  fell  upon  the  paschal  sufiferings  of  Him 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    437 

who  did  not  die  for  a  little  company;  of  Him  whose 
love  was  not  narrowed  to  a  band  of  men  gathered 
then  or  now,  but  whose  love  went  out  toward 
the  whole  world.  If  we  belong  to  Jesus  Christ,  then  wc 
must  feel  for  this  world  of  Christ's  as  Christ  felt  for 
it;  we  must  hunger  for  its  redemption  with  the  same 
intensity  with  which  he  hungered  for  it,  and  we  must 
be  willing,  even  as  He  was  willing,  to  go  to  Calvary 
for  its  life. 

And  in  the  third  place,  if  a  man  belongs  to  Christ 
his  sympathies  must  be  as  wide  as  Christ's,  for  the 
sake  of  his  own  spiritual  life.  It  is  one  of  God's  laws, 
as  inexorable  as  any  of  His  natural  laws,  that  no  man 
can  keep  spiritual  blessing  to  himself.  God  will  not 
let  him  do  it.  He  will  turn  such  blessing  into  ashes. 
When  Paul  quoted  Christ's  words  in  the  twentieth 
chapter  of  the  Book  of  Acts — "  It  is  more  blessed  to 
give  than  to  receive  " — and  saved  us  in  that  way  the 
only  words  of  Christ  that  are  not  recorded  for  us  in  the 
Gospels,  he  did  something  more  than  save  us  only  one 
detached  statement  of  Christ ;  he  kept  for  us  the  very 
kernel  of  Christ's  teaching.  Whatsoever  would  save 
its  life  shall  lose  it,  whether  it  is  a  local  association,  a 
local  church,  an  individual  Christian,  a  company  of 
Christian  men,  any  Christian  organization,  or  a  Chris- 
tian Church,  "  Whosoever  shall  seek  to  save  his  life 
shall  lose  it."  I  do  not  need  to  tell  the  story  of 
the  anti-missionary  Baptists,  the  story  of  the  Moravian 
Church,  or  the  story  of  human  lives.  All  of  us  have 
seen  God  demonstrating  this  truth, — God's  disapproval 
written  upon  the  lives  of  men  who  think  that  they  can 
appropriate  wholly  to  themselves  the  salvation  that  is 
sent  for  all,  without  handing  it  on  to  others,  for  whom 
also  He  died. 

And  now  what  do  men  say  in  reply  to  all  this  ?    Well, 


438        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

they  say,  "  There  is  so  much  need  here  at  home." 
Need  for  what?  Need  for  more  lawyers?  Ask  Mr. 
Depew,  who  at  the  commencement  of  the  Yale  Law 
School,  some  years  ago,  said  that  there  were  already 
over  sixty  thousand  lawyers  in  this  land — about  twice 
as  many  as  any  legitimate  business  can  be  found  for. 
Ask  Justice  Brewer,  who,  as  President  of  the  Ameri- 
can Bar  Association,  at  the  annual  meeting  in  St.  Louis 
several  years  ago,  made  an  even  stronger  declaration. 
The  students  who  were  at  Northfield  in  1889  will  never 
forget  a  speech  of  the  Dean  of  the  Yale  Law  School, 
Prof.  Wayland,  in  which  he  challenged  the  men  looking 
forward  to  the  law  to  stop  on  the  threshold,  and  be 
very  sure  that  they  had  the  sanction  of  their  Lord.  I 
do  not  say  one  word  against  the  practice  of  the  law ; 
but  I  do  say  that  no  man  has  a  right  to  enter  the  law 
without  being  clear  that  that  is  the  will  of  God  for 
him.  Need  for  what  in  this  land?  Need  for  more 
teachers?  There  are  over  four  hundred  thousand 
teachers  already  in  this  country.  There  is  scarcely 
a  vacancy  that  occurs  in  any  one  of  our  better  in- 
stitutions for  which  there  are  not  twenty  applications. 
The  teachers'  employment  agencies  are  always  busy. 
Need  for  what?  Need  for  more  business  men?  Brad- 
street's  says  that  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  business 
men  in  New  York  fail,  the  competition  being  so  fierce, 
and  bitter,  and  strong,  and  incompetency  so  common. 
Need  for  more  ministers?  There  are  one  hundred 
thousand  of  them  already  in  this  land,  one  to  every  six 
or  seven  hundred  of  the  population.  It  might  be  far 
better  if  there  were  only  half  as  many ;  if  the  Spirit  of 
God  spread  out  the  work  that  has  been  laid  on  their 
shoulders,  on  the  shoulders  of  those  who  have  been 
paying  others  to  do  their  work  for  God  in  their  stead. 
Need  for  what  ?    Let  us  ask  ourselves,  need  for  what  ? 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    439 

And  then  stop  to  think  that  if  the  ordained  ministers 
alone  in  this  land  would  speak  to  two  souls  each  day 
for  one  year,  they  would  in  that  year  evangelize  this 
whole  land  over  again,  having  reached  Christians  and 
non- Christians  alike.  If  the  Sabbath-school  teachers 
alone  reached  one  man  a  day,  inside  of  thirty  days  they 
would  have  re-evangelized  this  whole  land.  If  the 
members  of  the  Protestant  churches  spoke  each  to  one 
soul  a  day  each  day  of  a  week,  at  the  end  of  seven 
days  the  United  States  would  have  been  re-evangelized. 
There  is  plenty  of  work  here  in  the  United  States, 
need  along  all  these  lines  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
But  let  no  one  say,  "  There  is  plenty  of  need  for  Chris- 
tian work  here  in  the  United  States,"  and  then  go  out 
into  the  United  States  and  not  do  any  of  it.  Hundreds 
of  men  have  locked  the  foreign  mission  door  in  their 
own  faces  on  the  pretext  that  there  was  so  much  to  do 
at  home,  and  have  then  deliberately  sought  their  own 
ambitions  here  at  home. 

Or,  people  say,  "  There  is  no  immediate  emergency ; 
the  thing  has  drifted  for  eighteen  hundred  years, 
and  it  can  drift  for  eighteen  hundred  years  more." 
No  haste  ?  I  suppose  such  people  have  not  "  lost  "  any- 
body they  love.  Have  they  ever  read  the  fourteenth 
verse  of  the  twenty-fourth  chapter  of  Matthew — "  And 
this  gospel  of  the  kingdom  shall  be  preached  in  the 
whole  world  for  a  testimony  unto  all  nations,  and  then 
shall  the  end  come  ?  "  I  do  not  press  these  words  be- 
yond the  very  clear  meaning  that  lies  upon  the  face 
of  them.  This  gospel  of  the  kingdom  shall  first  be 
preached  as  a  witness  unto  all  nations,  and  then  shall 
the  end  come.  The  end  of  what?  The  end  of  tears. 
The  end  of  sorrow.  The  end  of  death.  The  end  of 
separation  and  partinicr.  The  beginning  of  that  glad 
day  when  those  who  sleep  in  Christ  shall  wake,  and  al) 


440       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  torn  hearts  of  earth  shall  be  healed,  and  all  the 
separation  shall  be  over,  "  and  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  shall  be  revealed."  Do  you  say  you  do  not  want 
to  see  that  day  ?  Do  you  say  you  have  got  no  interest 
in  its  coming?  Very  well,  then,  you  may  well  turn  your 
back  on  the  last  command  of  Christ ;  you  may  well  turn 
your  back  on  the  wail  of  Christ's  dying  world ;  you 
may  well  turn  your  back  on  the  needs  of  your  own 
spiritual  life — only  remember  that  when  you  do  so  you 
read  yourself  out  of  the  company  of  the  true-hearted, 
large-souled  children  of  Him  who  loved  the  whole 
world  and  gave  His  Son  for  its  life. 

Eight  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  month  of  No- 
vember, in  the  market  place  of  the  little  French 
town  of  Clermont,  Pope  Urban  stood  on  a  lofty  scaf- 
fold, and  spoke  in  words  of  living  fire  to  the  mighty 
throng  that  was  gathered  there,  to  listen  to  him, 
and  as  the  orator  spoke  to  the  great  throng,  and 
swayed  it  as  a  man  will  sway  a  leaf  with  his  breath, 
their  cry  rose  up,  ever  louder  and  louder,  "  It  is  the  will 
of  God!  It  is  the  will  of  God;  "  "  Ah,"  rejoined  the 
orator,  "  it  is  indeed  the  will  of  God,  and  let  this 
memorable  word,  the  inspiration,  surely,  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  be  chosen  by  you  as  your  watch  cry  in  battle  as 
you  go  out  as  the  champions  of  Christ.  His  cross  is 
the  symbol  of  your  salvation.  Wear  it,  a  red  and 
bloody  cross,  as  a  sign  upon  your  hearts,  or  upon 
your  shoulders,  a  pledge  of  your  irrevocable  engage- 
ment." And  out  from  the  market  place  of  that  little 
French  town  there  poured  a  movement  that  lasted  for 
two  hundred  years.  It  filled  all  Europe  with  the  tread 
of  innumerable  armies.  It  whitened  the  Mediterranean 
with  the  sails  of  countless  fleets.  It  swept  in  a  great 
stream  of  Europe's  best  blood  over  Eastern  battle- 
fields.   It  erected  lordly  castles  on  Saracen  soil.    Then 


The  Missionary  Spirit  of  the  Christian  Life    441 

it  passed  away,  losing  all  that  it  had  won,  and  remained 
only  an  heroic  and  pathetic  episode  in  human  history. 
The  Crusades  teach  their  lesson !  They  teach  the 
lesson  which  will  be  learned  in  that  day  when  men 
hear  the  cry  of  the  new  crusade,  and  are  willing  to 
fight  for  the  cross  with  the  weapons  of  Him  whose  last 
words  from  it  were  words  of  forgiveness  and  of  peace. 
They  teach  the  lesson  of  what  God  can  do  when  the 
Spirit  of  God  sweeps  over  the  hearts  of  men  and  leads 
them  to  love  the  Christ  as  much  as  the  crusaders  loved 
His  sepulchre.  Would  that  now  the  Church  might 
hear  His  voice  declaring  once  again  what  is  His  will ; 
might  learn  that  His  will  is  clear  and  plain ;  that  it  is 
not  the  satisfaction  of  selfish  ambition ;  that  it  is  not  the 
chase  of  wealth ;  that  it  is  not  the  search  for  honour, 
or  the  gratification  of  pride;  but  that  it  is  a  life  laid 
out  for  God's  world !  A  few  years  ago,  in  Great 
Britain,  just  before  the  Ashanti  expedition  was  to  start, 
the  call  was  made  for  volunteers,  and  the  Scots  Guards 
were  called  out  at  Windsor  and  ranged  before  the  com- 
manding officer,  that  he  might  ask  for  volunteers.  He 
explained  what  the  expedition  was,  what  it  meant,  the 
sacrifices  that  would  be  involved,  and  he  said,  "  If  any 
men  in  this  company  will  volunteer,  let  them  stand  out," 
and  supposing  that  only  a  few  would  volunteer,  he 
turned  away  for  a  moment.  The  entire  company  ad- 
vanced one  step.  Upon  turning  around  he  noticed 
the  unbroken  line  of  the  Scots  Guards  and  was  sur- 
prised to  see  that  not  one  had  stepped  forward,  and 
cried  indignantly,  "  What,  the  Scots  Guards  and  no 
volunteers !  "  One  of  the  corporals  said,  "  The  whole 
line  stepped  forward."  Would  that  now  when  this 
larger  expedition  is  calling  for  volunteers,  when  the 
uplifted  cross  of  the  Christ — who  thirsted,  not  for  the 
salvation  of  a  few,  but  for  the  redemption  of  a  :vorld 


44^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

— is  held  up  before  our  eyes,  wc  might  hear  the  sweet 
and  mighty  call !  How  this  land  would  thrill  as  the 
aspen  quivers  if  only  men  by  the  hundreds  should 
volunteer  for  God ;  desirous  with  Henry  Martyn,  not 
to  burn  out  for  avarice,  to  burn  out  for  ambition,  to 
burn  out  for  self,  but,  looking  up  to  that  whole 
Burnt  Offering,  to  burn  out  for  God  and  His  world! 


XXXIX 

THE  DESIRE  OF  THE  NATIONS* 

WE  live  in  an  incomplete  world,  a  world 
of  longings  and  desires,  amid  men  whose 
wealth  consists  of  their  needs  and  their 
discontents.  There  is  another  view  of 
our  world  from  this.  There  are  those  who  weigh 
lightly  the  woes  of  their  fellow-men;  who  have 
never  heard  the  still  sad  music  of  humanity; 
who  think  it  of  slight  account  that  other  men 
should  suffer,  provided  only  their  own  lives  are 
restful  and  at  ease.  I  suppose  there  are  some  who  take 
this  irresponsible  view  of  the  world  because  they 
honestly  believe  that  the  world  is  fairly  content.  They 
look  out  over  its  teeming  peoples,  and  see  them  su- 
perficially satisfied  or  at  least  resigned.  There  is  some- 
thing in  the  human  race  beside  the  dog.  Even  in  hope- 
lessness men  resolve  that  they  will  live  game  and  see 
it  through.  They  find  out  after  a  while  that  the  bur- 
dens must  be  borne,  and  they  bend  their  backs  to  bear 
them,  and  smile  beneath  the  bending.  The  world  is, 
on  the  surface  of  it,  a  measurably  contented  world,  I 
suppose  some  take  this  view  because  they  have  no  deep 
needs  themselves.  Their  own  life  is  meat  and  drink. 
Things  make  it  up,  and  not  spirit ;  and,  looking  out 
over  a  world  of  men  possessing  things,  they  think  the 
world  is  well  enough  off,  with  its  things.  And  others 
we  have  met  who  view  the  world  in  this  way  because 
they  have  the  spirit  that  Jesus  pilloried  once  for  all  as 
the  spirit  that  He  most  abhorred,  in  the  parable  of  the 

*  An  address  before  the  Thirteenth  Annual  Convention  of 
the  Brotherhood  of  Saint  Andrew,  Baltimore,  Md.,  Sep- 
tember, 1898. 

443 


444       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Good  Samaritan,  when  He  spoke  of  the  Priest  and  the 
Lcvite  who  looked  upon  the  man  in  his  sufferings, 
gathered  up  their  skirts  with  a  feeling  of  irritation, 
^doubtless,  and  passed  by  on  the  other  side. 

Men  may  take  this  view  of  the  world,  if  they  wish. 
It  was  not  the  view  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  looked  down 
upon  a  world  that  he  realized  was  an  incomplete  world, 
a  world  with  an  unsatisfied  desire, — made  up  of  men 
and  women  who  were  lost ;  and  He  came  to  seek  and  to 
save  that  which  was  lost. 

This  world  to  which  He  came  is  a  world 
with  a  desire.  It  is  a  world  full  of  the  com- 
mon desires  of  life.  Underneath  all  the  super- 
ficial crust  of  its  contentments,  this  is  a  world 
of  suffering,  wrought  by  poverty  and  riches  and 
sin.  Some  years  ago,  I  heard  a  man  who  had  spent 
almost  all  his  life  in  India — a  man  whom  I  never  knew 
to  be  guilty  of  an  exaggeration — say,  "  One-half  the 
population  of  this  world  never  knows  what  it  is  to  have 
enough  to  eat.  Every  evening  the  sun  sets  upon  hun- 
dreds of  millions  of  hungry  men  and  women  and  little 
children."  I  received  recently,  a  letter  from  a  friend 
who  had  been  travelling  through  the  mountains  of  Kur- 
distan, and  he  said  in  substance,  "  I  can  sum  the  whole 
picture  up  in  just  these  words:  I  have  scarcely  been 
able  to  buy  a  chicken  in  the  villages  through  which  I 
have  passed.  It  has  been  almost  impossible  to  buy 
even  an  egg.  The  common  food  of  the  people  in  these 
villages  has  been  a  meal  made  out  of  one  part  of  bran 
and  five  parts  ground  cobs  of  the  corn.  I  have  passed 
by  many  a  house  through  whose  doors  the  women  do 
not  dare  to  venture  because  they  have  not  rags  enough 
to  hide  their  nakedness ;  though  I  have  lived  here  for 
years  I  have  never  seen  before  such  misery  as  among 
these  mountain  Nestorians."     There  are  more  pros- 


The  Desire  of  the  Nations  445 

perous  lands.  China  is  far  more  prosperous  but  even 
there  there  is  want  enough  and  in  the  land  to  the  South- 
west— a  land  blessed  by  better  government  than  any 
other  Asiatic  land,  a  land  lying  in  warm  climates,  where 
presumably  life  might  be  easier  and  its  burdens  less 
heavy  to  bear — only  three  years  ago  all  the  rest  of  man- 
kind looked  aghast  upon'  people  swept  away  by  the 
score  and  the  hundred  and  the  thousand  for  the  want 
of  the  mere  necessities  of  daily  life.  We  live  in  a 
world  of  bitter  desire  for  the  mere  necessary  things 
of  human  living.  We  live  in  a  world  of  great  physical 
need. 

We  live  in  a  world  of  social  desire.  Consider  only 
the  place  of  woman  in  non-Christian  lands.  Man  every- 
where is  the  master  of  his  own  sufferings.  I  can  under- 
stand how  a  man  can  be  a  heathen.  But  no  woman 
is  the  mistress  of  her  own  sufferings.  Man  is  the 
master  of  his,  and  of  hers  also ;  and  the  sorrows  of  her 
life,  and  its  anguish  and  its  pains,  are  the  gifts  of  man. 
There  is  not  one  religion,  save  Judaism  and  Christian- 
ity, that  does  not  sanction  polygamy.  There  is  not 
one  that  docs  not  fling  a  half  of  the  human  race  beyond 
the  pale  of  God's  destiny  for  it,  except  the  Jewish  faith 
and  the  faith  that  was  brought  to  men  by  Mary's  Son. 
We  live  in  a  world  of  great  social  desires. 

We  live  in  a  world  of  great  moral  need.  I  do  not 
know  better  how  to  suggest  it  than  by  an  illustration. 
I  passed  through  the  Northwest  Provinces  of  India 
some  years  ago  and  stopped  for  a  gathering  of  students 
in  the  city  of  Allahabad — young  men  brought  from  the 
different  universities  and  colleges  of  the  Northwest 
Provinces,  about  a  hundred  men  in  all.  On  the  Sun- 
day afternoon,  it  seemed  to  a  little  group  of  us  from 
America  and  Great  Britain,  who  had  known  one  an- 
other before  and  who  had  met  there,  that  it  would  be  a 


446       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

good  tliinjT^  to  gather  all  the  students  we  could  get  of 
that  university  city  in  the  largest  hall  available,  and 
have  a  personal  purity  meeting.  We  sent  a  committee 
to  wait  on  the  head  of  the  university,  to  ask  him  if  he 
would  allow  us  to  use  the  large  hall  of  the  university 
building  that  afternoon.  He  said,  "  Not  for  a 
Christian  meeting.  The  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment, of  course,  is  neutrality  in  the  matter  of 
religion,  and  we  cannot  let  you  have  it  if  you 
are  going  to  preach  Christianity  there."  We  told 
him  we  were  not  going  to  preach  any  more  Chris- 
tianity than  we  felt  he  would  not  object  to  himself 
if  he  should  be  there.  W^e  wanted  to  bring  before 
the  students  of  that  city  (he  knew  as  much  as  any 
man  how  much  it  was  needed)  the  claims  of  the  pure 
life.  He  said  if  that  was  all  we  could  have  it.  A 
large  number  of  young  men  of  various  religions  came 
into  the  hall  from  the  schools  of  the  city.  They  sat 
down  under  the  busts  of  their  great  men  and  the  pic- 
tures of  their  great  heroes  painted  upon  the  walls, 
Moslems  and  Hindus,  and  several  of  us  spoke  upon 
the  claims  of  the  pure  life.  At  the  end  of  the  meeting 
a  man  from  America,  who  was  leading  it,  said : 
"  Gentlemen,  I  think  you  have  now  got  our  idea — 
that  this  is  the  kind  of  life  that  men  were  made  to 
live.  We  believe  there  is  a  God  on  high,  who  loves  the 
unspotted  life  and  who  is  ready  to  give  every  man 
power  to  lead  a  life  without  a  stain.  If  there  is  any 
man  here  this  afternoon  who  would  like  to  have  the 
living  God  give  him  power  to  lead  a  stainless  life,  will 
he  stand  up  and  say  so  ?  "  And  at  once  a  student  from 
the  front  seat  cried  out  with  a  loud  voice,  "  No,  no." 
He  did  not  want  the  power  to  lead  a  stainless  life.  He 
preferred  the  kind  of  a  life  that  his  religion  sanc- 
tioned and  allowed,  and  in  some  regards  even  enjoined. 


The  Desire  of  the  Nations  447 

And  the  meeting  broke  up  after  that,  each  man  going 
to  his  own  place.  We  live  in  the  midst  of  a  world 
seamed  and  stained  and  darkened  with  sin,  from  the 
East  to  the  West,  and  from  the  North  to  the  South  of 
it,  a  world  with  an  intense  moral  need,  a  desire  so 
great  that  God  Himself  saw  there  was  no  other  way 
to  meet  it  than  by  the  sacrifice  of  His  own  Son,  whose 
blood  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin,  a  desire  in  which  the 
absence  of  wish  enlarges  the  awfulness  of  want. 

We  live  in  a  world  of  great  religious  desire  and  need. 
The  most  enlightened  man  of  the  most  wonderful 
country  in  Asia,  only  a  few  years  ago,  when  he  was  the 
Viceroy  of  the  Province  of  Chi-li,  and  the  Yellow 
River  overflowed  its  banks,  went  with  all  of  his  retinue 
to  kneel  down  in  one  of  the  large  temples  of  the  city, 
before  a  live  snake,  to  entreat  that  the  floods  that  had 
spread  out  over  all  their  country  might  subside.  That 
was  Li  Hung  Chang.  Intelligent  man  as  he  was,  he 
was  willing  still,  in  obedience  to  what  he  believed  were 
the  popular  claims  of  his  religion,  to  bow  down  rever- 
ently before  a  snake  as  a  god,  to  entreat  the  subsidence 
of  the  overflowing  waters  of  the  river.  If  one  of  the 
most  intelligent  men  of  the  most  intelligent  race  in 
Asia  can  thus  prostitute  himself  in  the  name  of  his 
religion,  how  much  of  life  and  food  can  there  be  in 
his  faith  for  the  real  spiritual  wants  and  longings  of 
men  ?  The  last  thing  that  any  Christian  man  wants  to 
do  is  to  judge  uncharitably  the  non-Christian  faiths. 
If  there  be  one  thing  he  wants  to  believe  in  more  than 
anything  else,  it  is  that  the  God,  who  has  not  left  Him- 
self without  a  witness  in  any  nation  under  the  sun 
should  have  largely  revealed  Himself  to  the  souls  of 
His  children  in  these  non-Christian  lands.  I  do  not 
believe  that  any  man,  however  strong  these  desires 
may  be  in  his  heart,  can  see  the  non-Christian  faiths. 


44^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

where  they  most  perfectly  express  themselves,  with- 
out coming  back  with  all  hope  abandoned  that  in  them 
or  through  them  any  way  can  be  opened  unto  the 
Father  of  the  spirits  of  men. 

And  these  needs  of  the  world  cannot  be  met  by  the 
political  institutions  of  the  East.  The  most  remarkable 
of  them  all  are  writing  their  doom  before  our  eyes, 
even  in  these  days,  in  China.  There  is  not  one  of  them 
that  is  not  worse  now  than  it  was  a  generation  ago,  or 
ten  generations  ago,  save  as  the  influence  of  the  West 
has  come  upon  it  and  touched  it.  And  they  grow 
worse  and  worse.  There  is  no  hope  for  these  peoples 
in  the  political  institutions  of  the  East. 

The  man  must  have  a  peculiar  vision  who  sees  any 
hope  for  them  in  the  political  institutions  of  the  West. 
Mr.  Julian  Hawthorne  wrote  back  from  India  to  the 
Cosmopolitan  Magazine,  in  his  articles  upon  the  famine 
conditions,  that  the  white  invasion  had  done  India 
harm,  so  far  as  it  had  been  colourless  or  merely  polit- 
ical. It  had  done  good  only  to  the  extent  that  it  had 
been  religious.  And  that  was  written  of  the  most  un- 
selfish and  helpful  and  Christian  political  institutions 
that  have  ever  been  transferred  to  Asia  from  the  West. 
And  when  one  turns  from  Great  Britain's  influence, 
and  listens  to  the  voice  of  Prince  Henry,  as  he  stands 
on  the  stage,  shaking  his  mailed  fist  in  the  face  of  all 
creation,  and  preaching  to  Asia  and  the  world  the 
gospel  of  the  consecrated  person  of  the  queer  Em- 
peror of  Germany,  one  comes  to  feel  more  and  more 
that  there  can  be  but  little  hope  for  these  Eastern 
peoples  in  these  political  institutions  of  our  Western 
lands.  What  is  good  in  our  political  institutions  save 
what  flows  from  the  outstretched  hands  upon  the 
Cross;  save  what  comes  from  His  influence,  who 
even  now  is  gathering  to  Himself  the  ages  past  and 


The  Desire  of  the  Nations  449 

yet  to  be?  All  that  is  wholesome  and  helpful  and 
healthful  in  our  political  life  here,  all  that  keeps  the 
nations  of  the  West  and  will  keep  them  if  they  are 
to  be  kept  and  saved  in  coming  years,  is  the  in- 
fluence of  Christ.  Everything-  in  them  apart  from 
that  would  be  but  as  the  ashen  apples  of  Lake 
Asphaltes,  in  the  hands  of  the  man  who  grasped 
it,  thinking  its  form  hid  true  substance.  Our 
institutions  do  not  save  us.  We  are  kept  busy  trying 
to  save  them.  There  is  no  hope  for  the  Eastern  na- 
tions in  the  political  institutions  of  the  West.  They 
are  not  their  desire. 

Nor  is  there  any  hope  for  them  in  their  own  re- 
ligious faiths.  Bishop  Graves  soberly  describes  the 
condition  of  China  as  that  of  men  not  knowing  God, 
men  living  under  a  faith,  if  it  can  be  called  a  faith, 
that  proclaims  God  not  to  be  knowable.  We  know  not 
our  present  life  and  this  little  world.  How  can  we  know 
of  the  unseen  life  and  the  unseen  world  ?  If  in  China, 
with  all  its  mighty  influences  of  sanity  and  sound 
judgment,  working  through  these  past  years  (and  they 
have  been  grievously  underestimated),  men  are  still 
in  ignorance  of  God,  and  hating  the  message  of  God 
when  it  comes,  what  can  we  expect  of  other  lands? 
And  as  for  Islam  wherever  it  has  gone,  it  has  either 
found  a  desert  or  made  one.  It  has  spread  its  sterile 
influence  over  all  life,  chilling  and  deadening  and  kill- 
ing it,  as  the  sterile  ice  lies  over  all  the  polar  world. 

There  are  three  elements  in  religion.  There  is  the 
element  of  dependence,  and  there  is  the  element  of 
fellowship,  and  there  is  the  element  of  progress.  It 
must  be  confessed  that  almost  every  non-Christian  re- 
ligion supplies  the  element  of  dependence.  Men  are 
dreadfully  afraid.  All  life  is  lived  under  the  shadow 
of  an  unseen  fear.     But  there  is  no  religion  in  this 


450       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

world  that  supplies  either  the  element  of  fellowship 
or  the  element  of  progress  save  the  religion  of  Him 
who  came  to  teach  men  that  they  are  the  Father's 
children,  and  to  kindle  in  their  hearts  the  flames  of  the 
divine  fire  that  is  to  burn  brighter  and  brighter  until 
the  fullness  of  the  perfect  day. 

The  only  hope  that  these  Eastern  peoples  have,  the 
only  answer  to  their  desire,  is  to  be  found  in  Him.  who 
is  "  The  Desire  of  all  Nations."  He  came  precisely  to 
meet  these  wants  and  needs  of  men.  "  I  am  the  Way, 
the  Truth,  and  the  Life,"  He  said.  "  No  man  cometh 
unto  the  Father  but  by  Me."  "  T  am  come  to  seek  and 
to  save  that  which  was  lost."  "  I  am  come  not  to 
condemn,  but  to  save  the  world."  "  Other  sheep  I  have 
which  are  not  of  this  Jewish  fold.  Them  also  I 
must  bring,  that  there  may  be  one  flock  and  one 
Shepherd." 

To  meet  the  wants  of  men  God  gave  His  only  Son. 
And  this  work  of  meeting  the  desires  of  the  nations 
Jesus  Christ  at  once  began.  That  was  the  fault  that 
men  found  with  Him.  That  was  the  ground  of  Celsus's 
complaint :  "  Let  us  hear,"  he  said,  "  what  kind  of 
persons  these  Christians  invite.  Every  one,  they  say, 
who  is  a  sinner,  who  is  devoid  of  understanding,  who 
is  a  child,  him  will  the  Kingdom  of  God  receive.  They 
assert  that  God  will  receive  the  sinner."  And  often 
has  this  complaint  been  made  against  Christianity, 
that  it  was  doing  exactly  what  "  The  Desire  of  all  Na- 
tions "  came  to  do — to  lift  the  burdens  off  the  shoulders 
of  the  overborne,  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  blind  that 
they  might  sec,  to  unstop  the  cars  of  the  deaf  that  they 
might  hear,  to  preach  deliverance  to  the  captives,  and 
the  opening  of  prisons  to  them  that  are  bound. 

And  this  same  work  of  satisfying  the  desire  of  the 
nations,  He  who  is  the  nations'  Desire  is  doing  now 


The  Desire  of  the  Nations  451 

in  our  own  time.  He  is  doing  it  on  the  broadest  possi- 
ble scale.  By  the  influences  of  His  gospel  He  is  doing 
it  in  the  renovation  of  national  character.  Underneath 
all  the  superficial  influence  of  Great  Britain's  political 
institutions  in  India,  He  is  building,  and  building,  and 
building — changing  more  hostility  into  love  for  our 
institutions  than  is  subsidized  by  the  gift  of  Govern- 
ment appointment,  or  awed  by  the  intimidation  of 
standing  armies.  As  to  national  character,  "  The  De- 
sire of  all  Nations  "  is  converting  the  East.  And  in 
community  after  community  He  is  lifting  life  up  out  of 
its  old  poverty  and  wickedness  and  want.  Moham- 
medans must  admit,  as  one  of  them  said  not  long  ago, 
in  substance,  in  one  of  the  villages  of  Eastern  Persia, 
"  I  can  always  tell  a  Christian  village  from  a  Moham- 
medan village  by  the  air  of  thrift,  by  the  better  wages, 
by  the  larger  crops,  by  the  better  built  houses,  by  the 
larger  and  more  comfortable  supply  of  furnishings 
that  they  contain."  Wherever  Christ's  gospel  goes 
in  this  world,  it  takes  away  physical  want  and  need. 
He  who  promised  that  His  blessing  would  be  on  His 
people  does  not  hesitate  to  let  that  blessing  fall  upon 
them  in  the  ways  that  are  most  visible  to  their  eyes 
and  most  tangible  in  their  life. 

He  is  remodelling  and  refashioning  the  religious  life 
and  the  moral  character  of  men.  I  went  once  to  a  Chi- 
nese temple  in  the  city  of  Pyeng-Yang,  in  Northern 
Korea.  The  grass  had  grown  up  between  the  stones, 
heavy  bolts  were  thrust  through  all  the  locks  of  the 
doors,  and  we  pounded  in  vain  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
or  so  before  we  aroused  the  sleeping  keeper.  We 
asked  him  what  the  closed  doors  of  the  temple  meant. 
"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  can  tell  you,  although  T  really  don't 
have  control  of  this  place.  T  am  just  living  here  be- 
cause this  is  a  cheap  place  to  lodge.     The  regular 


45 -i        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

keepers  are  all  gone.  Nobody  comes  here  any  more." 
We  asked  him  why.  He  said.  "  This  Christianity  has 
come  up  here  in  Northern  Korea.  Everybody  is  mad 
after  it,  and  nobody  comes  to  this  temple  to  worship 
any  more."  Wherever  Christ  in  this  world,  as  the 
nations'  Desire,  can  have  His  way,  His  disciples  work- 
ing with  Him  and  not  frustrating  His  will  by  their  dis- 
belief, or  their  negligence,  or  their  cold  heartedness,  or 
their  lack  of  faith,  He  is  meeting  the  wants  of  human 
hearts. 

Consider  these  two :  The  world,  with  its  desires,  on 
one  side;  the  Christ,  with  His  supplies,  on  the  other. 
Between  them  we  of  Christ's  Church.. stand.  To  bring 
these  two  together  is  a  duty  that  we  owe  to  our  own 
personal  Christian  life.  The  missionary  enterprise 
would  be  necessary,  if  on  no  other  account,  simply 
as  a  vindication  of  our  home  Christianity.  If  my  Christ 
is  not  so  big  that  He  can  save  the  whole  world.  He 
is  not  big  enough  to  save  me.  And  if  He  is  so  big  that 
He  can  save  the  whole  world,  and  there  be  in  my  hand 
any  power  to  help  Him  do  it,  I  stultify  my  own  faith,  I 
deny  my  own  discipleship,  if  I  withhold  from  Him  the 
co-operation  that  I  can  give. 

We  owe  it  to  ourselves,  as  developing  best  what  God 
intends  for  us  in  personal  character.  In  1823,  in  the 
city  of  Boston,  there  came  into  a  little  gathering  of 
Baptist  clergymen  one  evening  a  young  man,  unknown 
to  the  world,  to  preach  a  sermon  that  had  been  an- 
nounced for  that  night,  and  that  meeting.  It  was  a 
stormy,  rainy  night,  and  as  Wayland  came  in  and  took 
his  place  he  said,  "  I  have  thrown  away  my  labour 
on  this  sermon."  But  as  he  rose,  he  put  into  his  ser- 
mon all  the  power  of  his  Christ-touched  soul.  This  was 
his  theme — "  The  Mor?il  Dignity  of  the  Missionary 
Enterprise."     Rowland  Hill  read  that  sermon  and  de- 


The  Desire  of  the  Nations  453 

dared  that  the  young  man  who  preached  it  had  in 
him  the  power  to  remake  men.  The  trustees  of  Brown 
University  read  that  sermon  and  they  said,  "  That  is 
the  man  we  want  in  this  place."  And  Wayland  began 
his  ahnost  unsurpassed  work  in  Brown  University 
because  he  had  in  that  meeting  felt  himself,  and  made 
the  hearts  of  those  who  heard  him  and  read  his  ser- 
mon feel,  the  moral  dignity  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise. 

I  make  no  apology  for  missions.  I  would  as  soon 
think  of  apologizing  for  the  Creed  that  declares  belief 
in  the  forgiveness  of  sins — not  of  my  sins  only,  but  also 
of  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  I  would  as  soon  apolo- 
gize for  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "  Thy  Kingdom  come." 
I  would  as  soon  apologize  for  the  great  commission 
and  the  Gospels  in  which  it  is  found — "  Go  ye  into  all 
the  world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature." 
I  would  as  soon  apologize  for  the  wisdom  of  the  Liv- 
ing God,  who  was  in  the  Son  whom  He  sent  into  the 
world  to  reconcile  it  unto  Himself. 

We  owe  it  to  ourselves  to  identify  our  life  anew 
with  this  enterprise,  which  seemed  to  the  Son  of  God 
so  morally  worthy  that  He  could  think  of  nothing  better 
to  which  to  give  His  own  priceless  life.  We  owe  it  to 
the  thousand  million  sinning  and  suffering  men,  each 
one  of  them  a  brother.  We  stand  before  them  with 
the  Bread  of  Life  in  our  hands,  and  we  eat  our  morsel 
alone,  while  we  leave  them  to  die  their  death  of  star- 
vation and  want.  We  stand  before  them  with  the 
message  that  God  is  love  in  our  hearts,  and  we  let  it 
die  upon  our  lips,  while  they  go  down  in  their  dark- 
ness, stumbling  blindfold  around  His  great  altar  stairs. 
How  dare  we  meet  them  in  the  day  when  every  man 
shall  stand  before  the  judgment  seat  of  Christ,  to  give 
an  account  of  the  deeds  done  in  the  body,  if  we  hold 


454        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

back  from  these  our  brethren  the  message  of  the  love 
and  tlie  hfe  and  the  blood  of  our  Lord  and  theirs? 

And  we  owe  it  to  Him  Who  is  the  nations'  Desire. 
I  say  it  reverently,  if  we  live  in  the  midst  of  an  in- 
complete world,  we  are  the  disciples  of  an  incomplete 
Christ.  As  truly  as  Christ  is  "  The  Desire  of  all  Na- 
tions," are  all  the  nations  the  desire  of  Christ.  As 
truly  as  on  the  one  side  they  stand  waiting  for  Him, 
so  as  truly  on  the  other  side  He  stands  waiting  for 
them.  The  Kingdom  is  waiting  for  its  King,  and  the 
King  is  waiting  for  His  Kingdom. 

Some  years  ago  Keshub  Chunder  Sen,  who  only 
saw  the  Saviour  from  afar,  and  who  touched  but  the 
hem  of  the  Master's  garment,  declared,  "  None  but 
Jesus,  none  but  Jesus,  none  but  Jesus  is  worthy  to  wear 
the  diadem  of  India :  and  He  shall  have  it."  And  if  none 
but  Jesus  is  worthy  to  wear  the  diadem  of  India,  who 
but  Jesus  is  worthy  to  wear  the  diadem  of  China,  and 
of  Japan,  and  of  Africa  and  of  the  Islands  of  the  Sea  ? 
Shall  He  have  it  ?  Let  us  go  out  and  get  it  for  Him ! 
And  when  we  have  got  it,  let  us  lay  it  down  upon  His 
brow — the  brow  of  "  The  Desire  of  all  Nations  " — 
and  cover  with  its  glory  forever  the  scars  of  His  crown 
of  thorns ! 


XL 

WHAT  CHRIST  HAS  DONE  FOR  WOMAN 

IT  is  a  curious  fact  that  all  the  music  of  the  non- 
Christian  world  is  in  the  minor.  One  of  the 
strongest  and  strangest  recollections  which  one 
brings  back  from  Asia  is  the  weird  sadness  of  its 
music.  Often  one  hears  again  the  long-drawn  strains 
of  the  camel-driver's  song,  the  plaintive  chant  of  a 
funeral  or  a  wedding,  or  the  sad  songs  of  the  little 
children  playing  in  the  village  streets.  It  is  a  curious 
fact,  and  yet,  if  a  people's  music  is  expressive  of  a 
people's  life,  it  ceases  to  be  curious.  The  music  of 
the  non-Christian  world  is  sad  and  dreary  because  the 
life  of  the  non-Christian  world  is  dreary  and  sad.  In 
Dr.  Smith's  Life  of  Henry  Drummond,  we  read  among 
Professor  Drummond's  impressions  of  Africa,  "  I  seem 
to  myself  to  have  been  living  in  an  atmosphere  of 
death  all  the  time." 

Of  course,  over  against  this  sadness  there  is  pleasant- 
ness and  jollity  of  life.  I  think  wherever  there  are 
human  hearts  there  will  be  some  human  love,  and  one 
cannot  go  around  the  world  without  seeing  the  faces 
of  merry  children,  but  all  this  only  sets  off  more 
darkly  the  pathos  and  the  dreariness  of  the  heathen 
world.  It  will  help  us  to  appreciate  better  the  privi- 
leges that  we  enjoy,  if  we  can  get  some  idea 
of  what  life  would  be  bare  of  Christ,  of  all  that  Jesus 
Christ  has  brought  to  us  consciously  and  unconsciously, 
of  wealth  and  joy  and  blessing. 

I  suppose  that,  for  one  thing,  the  heathen  world  is 
such  a  sad  and  pathetic  world  because  its  life  is  so  small. 
The  life  of  its  men  is  small,  puny,  dwarfed,  but,  deeply 

455 


456        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

as  one  sympathizes  with  the  needs  of  his  fellowmcn, 
what  I  have  to  say  here  has  reference  chiefly  to  how 
a  woman's  need  in  a  heathen  land  looks  to  a  Christian 
man.  If  a  heathen  man's  life  is  puny  and  dwarfed 
and  small,  a  heathen  woman's  life  is  yet  more  cramped 
and  narrow.  Think  what  our  lives  would  be  if  they 
were  deprived  of  all  intellectual  stimulus  from  without. 
We  are  all  largely  dependent  on  the  ideas  gained  from 
other  people.  Imagine  life  robbed  of  every  printed 
and  written  word,  robbed  of  all  fresh  information  from 
without,  robbed  of  every  fresh  suggestion  and  idea, 
and  we  will  begin  to  have  a  faint  conception  of  a 
heathen  woman's  life. 

A  friend  of  mine  in  Tungchow  pointed  out  to  me  in 
Northern  China  the  home  of  a  woman  who  had  told 
him  that  for  thirty  years  she  had  not  been  out  of  sight 
of  her  front  door.  For  thirty  years  her  life  had  been 
bounded  by  the  grey  streets  and  the  brown  earth  that 
were  within  sight  of  that  simple  little  Chinese  hovel. 
That  life  was  only  a  type  of  the  lives  of  hundreds  of 
millions  of  women  in  this  world,  barren  and  empty  of 
those  things  without  which  our  life  would  scarcely  be 
worth  living;  would  be  only  like  the  life  of  beasts. 
Now  you  can  imagine  something  of  what  Christianity 
means,  coming  into  an  empty,  barren  life  like  that. 
It  comes,  first  of  all,  with  a  perfect  flood  of  intellectual 
quickening  and  awakening.  It  teaches  women  that 
they  may  think. 

I  suppose  that  women  who  are  sceptics  never  stop 
to  think  that  their  right  to  be  sceptics  comes  from 
Christ.  If  Christ  had  not  touched  their  life,  they 
would  not  even  have  the  privilege  of  donving  God's 
claims  upon  their  life  and  service.  Throughout 
the  non-Christian  world,  women  think  only  when  the 
hand  of  Christ  has  touched  the  springs  of  thought  and 


What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman     457 

said  to  them,  "  Woman,  I  say  unto  you  arise  and 
think,"  Hundreds  of  times  as  many  Christian  women 
proportionately  are  able  to  read  as  non-Christian 
women.  Over  and  over  again  in  httle  gatherings  of 
Christian  women  in  Asia  we  would  ask,  "  How  many 
of  you  could  read  before  you  were  Christians  ?  "  and 
scarcely  a  hand  would  be  lifted.  "  How  many  of  you 
can  read  now  ? "  and  almost  every  hand  would  be 
raised,  sometimes  even  of  old  blind  women,  who  had 
been  obliged  to  learn  to  read  with  their  fingers.  The 
touch  of  Christ  upon  them  had  meant  quickening  of 
intellectual  life.  Christ  comes  into  the  lives  of  the 
women  of  the  world,  teaching  them  new  dignity,  giving 
them  real  human  interests,  assuring  them  that  they  are 
to  walk  side  by  side  with  men  and  that  they  are  the 
daughters  of  the  Father  on  high. 

Of  course  Christianity  means  more  to  us  than  it  does 
to  these  women,  but  most  of  us  do  not  realize  what  it 
means  as  they  do,  as  they  look  back  to  the  old  life, 
empty,  vain,  barren,  poor,  incoherent ;  and  then  on  their 
present  life  so  rich,  so  joined  with  God,  so  full  of  all  His 
fellowship,  so  blessed  with  the  multitude  of  bless- 
ings which  are  the  commonplace  of  our  life,  and  which 
we  never  think  of  as  having  been  as  much  a  direct  gift 
of  Jesus  Christ  to  us  as  His  own  presence,  or  the  play 
of  His  Spirit  upon  our  hearts. 

But  the  enlarging  and  enriching  of  our  lives  here  is 
a  small  part  of  what  Christianity  does  for  us.  I  think 
the  greater  reason  for  the  sadness  and  the  pathos 
of  the  heathen  world  is  the  cruelty  of  its  love- 
lessness.  I  am  speaking  not  of  the  men  of  the  world. 
We  get  into  the  way  of  speaking  and  thinking  of  this 
world  as  though  it  were  a  world  of  men,  and  we  talk 
of  the  social  problems  of  life  as  if  they  were  masculine 
problems,  and  we  speak  of  the  needs  of  Asia  as  though 


458       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

they  were  the  needs  of  men.  Ahiiost  everybody  is 
talking  of  the  Philippine  problem,  for  example,  as 
though  it  were  simply  a  problem  of  what  a  few  men 
desire.  But  we  ought  to  think  of  what  the  women 
and  the  little  children  of  the  Philippines  need  and 
frame  our  judgment  on  the  basis  of  what  they  require 
and  should  have.  When  one  thinks  of  what  Christ 
means  to  him,  of  all  the  sweetness  of  His  fellowship, 
of  all  the  wealth  of  His  gifts,  his  heart  must  go  out 
to  the  men  of  the  world  who  do  not  have  these  bless- 
ings ;  but  when  he  goes  home  in  the  evening  and  looks 
at  wife  and  child,  his  heart  must  nearly  break  for 
the  women  and  the  children  of  the  world,  when  he 
thinks  of  what  Christ  could  mean  to  them,  and  of 
what  we  are  holding  back  from  them  and  denying  to 
them. 

If  anybody  should  ask  me  to  risk  Christianity  on 
one  single  cast,  to  stake  everything  on  one  argu- 
ment, I  sometimes  think  I  should  almost  be  willing 
to  select,  of  all  the  positions  of  Christian  apolo- 
getics, the  attitude  of  Christianity  towards  women 
and  children  as  over  against  the  attitude  of  every 
other  religion  of  the  world  towards  woman  and 
the  little  child.  It  was  given  to  Buddha  that  in  his 
candidacy  for  the  Buddhaship  three  curses  should 
never  befall  him  in  the  great  sweeping  whirl  of  trans- 
migration. He  should  never  be  born  in  hell,  he  should 
never  be  born  as  vermin,  he  should  never  be  born  as 
a  woman.  The  founder  of  Buddhism  was  to  be  deliv- 
ered from  those  three  things — the  foulest,  most  des- 
picable conditions  of  life  of  which  he  could  dream. 
One  of  the  finest  sights  in  Japan — the  land  where 
Buddhism  should  show  itself  at  its  best — is  the  way 
the  Tapanese  look  on  a  Christian  man  and  a  Christian 
woman  coming  out  of  a  Christian  church  side  by  side ; 


What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman     459 

the  way  they  will  nod  to  one  another  and  speak  of  this 
strange  sight  not  seen  in  Japan  before  Christ's  gospel 
came,  of  a  woman  standing  side  by  side  with  a  man. 
The  Japanese  press  is  engaged  from  time  to  time  in 
discussing  the  question  of  concubinage,  and  a  great 
number  of  the  Japanese  papers,  Buddhist  or  Shinto  or 
liberal  as  they  profess  themselves  to  be,  lay  out  all 
tlie  energy  they  have  at  such  times  to  defend  the  in- 
stitution of  concubinage.  That  is  what  Buddhism  has 
done  for  woman. 

Hinduism  has  done  infinitely  worse.  The  code  of 
Manu,  the  highest  religious  authority  among  Hindus, 
says,  "  Women  have  no  business  with  the  text  of  the 
sacred  book."  A  Brahman  is  to  "  suspend  read- 
ing the  Veda  if  a  woman  come  in  sight."  "  Though 
unobservant  of  approved  usages,"  the  code  declares, 
"  or  enamoured  of  another  woman,  or  devoid  of  good 
qualities,  yet  a  husband  must  constantly  be  revered 
as  a  god  by  a  virtuous  wife."  I  do  not  wonder  that 
Mr.  Kipling  could  call  the  foundations  of  Hindu  life 
— "  rotten, — utterly  and  bestially  rotten." 

But  worst  of  all  is  the  condition  of  women  under 
the  latest  of  the  world's  religions.  I  think  it  is  a 
judgment  on  Mohammedanism  for  having  rejected 
women's  Saviour  that  it  has  left  woman  in  almost 
the  worst  case  of  all  the  non-Christian  religions — a 
viler  condition  than  she  was  in  under  the  savage  in- 
stitutions of  Arabia  before  Mohammedanism  arose. 
Turn  some  time  to  an  article  that  appeared  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  several  years  ago,  written  by  a  woman 
from  Constantinople,  I  think,  entitled  "  A  Voice  from 
the  Harem,"  in  which  she  said :  "  The  duty  that  man 
owes  to  his  fellow  creature  is  hardly  ever  mentioned  in 
our  religion.  The  very  heaven  of  the  Koran  is  a  para- 
dise   conditioned   upon    the     eternal     degradation     of 


460      Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

womanhood."  I  understand  something  about  the 
position  of  women  in  Mohammedanism  after  having 
gone  up  and  down  through  their  villages.  One 
autumn  evening  we  stopped  in  a  little  Moslem 
village  and  spread  out  our  cots  for  the  night 
in  one  of  the  houses  of  the  village.  The  old 
woman  of  the  house  stood  in  the  door  of  the 
family  room  until  at  last  my  friend  took  from  one  of 
his  travelling  bags  a  counterpane  with  red  and  white 
squares  and  laid  it  over  the  top  of  his  cot.  The  old 
empty-hearted  woman  stretched  forth  her  hand  and 
laid  it  gently  over  the  great  red  and  white  squares. 
At  last  she  looked  up  into  his  face  with  great  admira- 
tion in  her  eyes,  and  asked  him  where  he  got  that 
beautiful  thing.  He  told  her  that  his  wife  had  made 
it  for  him,  and  she  pointed  to  the  room  where  the  two 
ladies  of  our  party  were,  and  asked  whether  she  was 
in  there.  "  No,"  said  my  friend,  "  she  is  not  in  there." 
"  Are  they  both  his  wives  ?  "  she  said,  pointing  to  me. 
"  No,"  said  my  friend,  "  they  are  not.  According  to 
our  religion  men  have  but  one  wife  each.  We  think  it 
is  a  better  system ;  more  love  in  it.  Home  is  sweeter. 
It  isn't  so  in  your  religion,  is  it?"  "No,"  said  the 
old  woman,  "  it  isn't  so  with  us."  "  How  is  it  in  this 
home  ?  "  said  my  friend.  "  Is  there  more  than  one 
wife  here?"  "No,"  said  the  woman,  "there  is  only 
one  now,  but  there  will  be  another  here  next  week." 
"What  will  be  your  life  then?"  said  my  friend. 
"What  is  your  life  now?  happy?"  "Ah,  sahibs," 
said  the  woman — and  the  tears  came  out  and  stood 
upon  her  cheeks — "  Ah,  sahibs,  our  life  is  hcl! !  " 

Their  life  is  hell.  After  having  seen  something  of 
the  weariness,  and  the  agony,  and  the  suffering  of  it, 
I  can  understand  how  a  Moslem  woman  near  the 
city  of  Hamadan,  watching  Mr.  and  Mrs.   Hawkes, 


What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman     461 

missionaries  there,  as  they  tarried  for  a  while  in  a 
village,  and  seeing  all  the  courtesies  that  a  Christian 
man  paid  to  his  wife,  could  seize  an  opportunity  when 
she  was  alone  to  say  to  her,  "  Mrs.  Hawkes,  I  have 
been  watching  you  and  your  husband.  We  never  saw 
anything  like  this  in  our  town  before.  Your  prophet 
did  well  for  you  Christian  women.  Our  prophet  did 
not  do  well  for  us.  I  am  going  to  have  words  with 
our  prophet  when  I  meet  him  in  the  next  world,"  and 
I  understand  how  another  could  say,  "  I  shall  stand 
by  the  open  gates  of  hell  and  watch  the  Mussulman 
men  march  in  first."  Miss  Jewett,  one  of  the  mis- 
sionaries in  Persia,  travelling  through  a  Moslem  town, 
stopped  in  a  Moslem  home.  When  the  husband  of  the 
home  had  gone  out,  she  turned  to  the  head  wife  and 
said  to  her,  "This  is  your  home,  isn't  it?"  "Yes," 
said  the  woman,  "  this  is  our  home."  "  And  that  was 
your  husband,  wasn't  it?"  "Yes,"  said  the  woman, 
"  that  is  my  husband."  "  And  you  love  him,  I  sup- 
pose," said  Miss  Jewett.  "  Oh,  yes,"  said  the  woman, 
"  I  love  him  " — and  she  turned  with  passion  in  her 
eyes — "  I  love  him ;  as  much  as  a  sieve  holds  water,  I 
love  him  !  "  We  little  comprehend  what  Christ  has 
brought  into  life,  in  love,  in  gentleness,  in  all  that 
great  range  of  courtesies  without  which  the  life  of 
woman  here  would  be  just  like  the  lives  of  five  hundred 
million  of  her  fellow  women  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world. 

Where  there  is  no  respect  for  women,  what  respect 
can  there  be  for  home  ?  Can  there  be  a  home  ?  Think 
of  what  our  home  means  to  us.  There  is  scarcely  a 
minute  of  the  day  when  a  true  man  does  not  think  of 
what  his  home  means  to  him,  and  every  fresh  thought 
of  it  helps  him  to  understand  anew  what  Jesus  Christ 
has  done  for  him  and  for  those  he  loves,  and  what 


462        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

waits  to  be  clone  by  Christ  for  a  thousand  million  of 
our  sinning-  and  suffering  fellow  creatures.  I  once 
asked  one  leading  Japanese  Christian  whether  they 
had  much  family  worship  in  their  Christian  homes 
in  Japan.  **  Ah,"  he  said,  "  }ou  have  put  your 
finger  just  on  the  thing  that  will  come  last. 
'  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night '  would  not  be  pos- 
sible in  Japan ;  such  a  thing  as  that  could  not  be 
conceived  yet  in  all  Japan."  As  yet  there  is  none  of 
that  equality,  none  of  that  love,  none  of  that  gathering 
of  father  and  mother  and  little  children  around  the 
hearth  side  when  the  evening  shadows  are  falling,  to 
pray  together  and  together  to  worship  Him  after 
whom  every  fatherhood  is  named,  such  as  is  the  fruit 
of  the  long,  long  influence  of  Christ  upon  family  life. 
Every  Christian  home  is  a  missionary  appeal.  Even 
every  home  in  this  land  that  is  a  sweet  home,  though 
Christ  be  barred  from  its  fellowship,  is  what  it  is  be- 
cause Christ  has  made  it  so  and  because  His  influence 
has  touched  life,  teaching  men  and  women  what  a 
home  can  be,  and  naming  it  after  that  home  on 
high. 

Even  more  than  the  woman  and  the  home,  the  little 
child  needs  Christ.  More  than  any  other  woe  or  want 
of  the  world  stands  out  the  pathetic  need  of  the  little 
child.  Six  years  ago  I  stopped  from  a  British  India 
steamer  at  Muscat  to  visit  Peter  Zwemer  who  was 
working  there  alone,  the  signs  of  fever  jilain  upon  liis 
face  so  that  any  man  might  read,  but  abiding  still  by 
his  work.  He  took  us  up  to  the  house  where  he  was 
living,  and  itito  the  room  where  he  said  his  family 
would  be  found.  There,  sitting  on  little  benches 
around  the  room,  were  eighteen  little  black  boys.  They 
had  been  rescued  from  a  slave  ship  that  had  been 
coming  up   the   Eastern   coast  of  Arabia   with  these 


What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman     463 

little  fellows,  and  other  slaves  to  be  sold  on  the  date 
plantations  along  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  rivers. 
The  British  consul  had  gone  out  and  seized  them  from 
the  slavers,  and  had  delivered  them  to  Mr.  Zwemer  to 
keep  until  they  were  eighteen  years  of  age,  when  they 
were  to  be  given  their  manumission  papers.  They  sat 
in  the  plain  room,  dressed  in  their  brown  khaki  gar- 
ments with  their  little  red  fezes  on  their  heads,  just 
as  happy  as  the  children  of  a  king.  "  They  were  not 
so,"  said  Mr.  Zwemer,  "  when  I  got  them.  The  eigh- 
teen of  them  huddled  together  in  the  middle  of  the 
floor  just  like  rabbits,  and  every  time  I  came  close 
they  huddled  nearer  together.  They  distrusted  every- 
one. For  months  they  had  known  nothing  but  abuse 
and  cruelty,  and  had  been  shut  down  in  the  hold  of 
the  slave  .ship  in  order  that  they  might  not  betray 
their  presence."  I  saw  on  the  cheek  of  each 
child  a  little  mark  about  the  size  of  a  silver  half-dollar 
on  the  cheekbone,  and  I  asked  Mr.  Zwemer  what 
that  curious  scar  was.  "  Why,"  he  said,  "  that  is  the 
brand  of  the  slaver's  iron.  Every  one  of  these  little 
boys  was  burned  that  way."  I  understood  something, 
standing  in  the  presence  of  those  eighteen  little  black 
boys  with  the  brand  of  the  slaver's  iron  on  their 
cheeks,  of  what  it  was  that  nerved  Wilberforce  and 
Clarkson  to  endure  ignominy  and  shame  and  social 
ostracism  until  at  last  they  had  stricken  the  shackles 
from  the  wrists  of  the  last  British  slave  and  reinstated 
him  in  his  rights  as  a  man.  There  they  were,  those 
eighteen  little  fellows  brought  up  from  all  over  Africa, 
a  symbol  of  what  child  life  is  when  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  loving  influence  of  Christ.  They  sang  the  child 
song  that  I  think  I  have  heard  in  a  dozen  different 
lands — almost  all  the  little  Christian  children  in  the 
heathen  world  know  how  to  sing  it: — 


464       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

"  Jesus  loves  me — this  I  know, 
For  the  Bible  tells  me  so." 

You  cannot  know  how  sweet  it  is  until  you  hear  it 
coming  from  the  lips  of  little  children  the  happiness 
of  whose  lives  has  come  directly  from  that  sweet 
transforming  life  of  Jesus. 

"  Aye,  sure  the  babe  is  in  the  cradle  blest, 
Since  God  Himself  a  Baby  deigned  to  be, 
And  slept  upon  a  mortal  mother's  breast, 
And  bathed  in  baby  tears  His  deity." 

Every  time  one  thinks  of  the  little  children  of  the 
world  and  then  of  our  little  children  here  at  home  his 
heart  must  suffer  for  their  sufferings,  over  the  empti- 
ness and  the  vanity  and  the  hatreds,  and  the  poverty 
of  their  life ;  and  he  must  think  also  of  that  holy  Child 
Jesus,  the  Father's  little  Son,  who  came  down  to  make 
these  little  children  and  their  lives  as  rich  and  fragrant 
and  full  of  joy  as  the  lives  of  our  children  here  at 
home. 

I  wish  I  could  say  something  that  would  make 
women  sensible  of  what  every  woman  owes  to 
Christ.  Everything  that  they  have  Christ  gave  them. 
Everything  that  they  are  that  is  worth  being  Christ 
has  made  them.  Many  are  not  Christians,  or  call 
themselves  agnostics  or  sceptics.  Many  deny  Jesus's 
deity.  They  have  never  been  won  and  wooed  by  the 
sweetness  of  His  tender  and  perfect  humanity.  Why 
will  they  not  be  honest,  then  ?  Why  do  they  keep  all 
that  Christ  has  brought  them,  and  yet  remain  unwilling 
to  acknowledge  that  He  gave  it  to  them?  If  we  are 
willing  to  receive  from  Christ's  hands  Christ's  bless- 
ings, why  will  we  be  so  dishonest,  so  false,  as  to  hold 


What  Christ  Has  Done  for  Woman     465 

back  from  Christ  the  loyalty  of  life  and  service  and 
love? 

There  is  an  Oriental  story  of  a  beggar  who  lay  at  a 
king's  gate,  and  day  by  day  received  alms  from  the 
king's  hand.  One  day  the  king  came  out  from  the 
gate  and  found  that  he  had  forgotten  something,  and 
he  called  to  the  beggar,  "  Beggar,  run  me  this  errand." 
The  beggar  looked  haughtily  up  into  the  king's  face 
and  said,  "  Sire,  I  solicit  alms ;  I  do  not  run  errands." 
Looking  over  Christian  life,  and  over  that  great  range 
of  life  that  lies  outside  the  honourable  confession  of 
Christ,  how  dishonourable,  how  ignoble,  how  unworthy 
are  those  of  us  who  receive  from  Christ,  so  generous, 
so  good,  all  the  wealth  of  His  gifts  without  being 
willing  to  yield  back  to  Christ  the  little  loyalty  of  our 
own  hearts,  the  loving  obedience  of  our  own  service. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  saying  one  word  to  young 
women  who  are  hesitating  on  the  threshold  of  their 
life  work.  What  is  it  to  be  as  you  look  out  upon  it? 
An  empty,  aimless  life?  Life  in  some  American  town 
or  some  American  city,  in  which  you  drop  into  the 
frivolous,  commonplace,  social  existence  of  the  town 
or  the  city  without  any  great,  worthy,  consuming,  ab- 
sorbing passion?  Is  that  to  be  your  life?  There  are 
hundreds  of  young  women  of  whom  that  is  the  life. 
You  know  hundreds.  Is  that  to  be  your  life?  Christ 
did  not  give  us  life  to  spend  in  that  way.  Christ  gave 
us  life  to  pour  out  for  Him.  Christ  gave  us  life  to  use 
for  Him.  Life  is  no  tiny,  petty  bauble  of  that  kind. 
Life  is  a  great,  worthy,  holy  and  divine  thing.  Life 
is  to  be  used  as  a  sacred  trust.  Life  is  to  be  a  cup, 
out  of  which  thirsty  men  and  women  are  to  be  given 
drink.  Our  lives  are  bread,  by  which  hungry  men  and 
women  are  to  be  fed.  We  are  in  the  world,  like  our 
Master,  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister, 


466       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  to  give  our  lives  as  ransoms  for  many.     Will  we 
not  do  that?    That  is  what  life  is  given  to  us  for. 

What  I  have  been  saying  here  is  all  in  the  verse 
just  quoted  from  Christ's  own  lips  about  ministry  and 
sacrifice.  And  it  is  also,  in  a  little  Christmas  verse 
by  good  Father  Tabb.  Perhaps  that  will  bring  it 
home  to  us  and  fix  it  in  our  hearts. 

"  A  little  boy  of  heavenly  birth, 

But  far  from  home  to-day. 
Comes  down  to  find  His  ball,  the  earth, 

Which  sin  has  cast  away. 
O  comrades,  let  us  one  and  all 
Join  in  to  get  Him  back  His  ball." 


XLI 

PRAYER  AND  MISSIONS 

AMONG  the  Jews  there  has  been  a  saying,  "  He 
prays  not  at  all  in  whose  prayers  there  is  no 
mention  of  the  kingdom  of  God,"  but  the  veil 
which  remains  untaken  away  in  the  reading  of 
the  Old  Testament  has  hung  like  a  pall  over  the  living 
experience  of  this  truth  as  well.  And  Jewish  blind- 
ness finds  its  parallel  in  the  Church's  neglect  of  the 
voice  which  for  centuries  has  been  pleading,  largely  in 
vain,  "  Pray  ye  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  to  thrust  forth 
labourers  into  His  harvest."  Nineteen  long  centuries 
of  waiting,  during  which  His  kingdom  has  not  come, 
are  alike  the  evidence  and  the  result  of  the  absence 
of  real  desire  that  the  King  and  His  kingdom 
should  appear.  Perhaps  more  so  now  than  for  years, 
and  yet  very  little  even  to-day  does  the  longing  cry 
rise  up,  "  Thy  kingdom  come,"  not  only  as  an  inner 
advent  to  hearts  in  Christendom,  but  over  all  the 
world.  If  the  work  of  missions  were  purely  a  human 
enterprise,  this  neglect  might  be  intelligible.  But  in 
a  supernatural  cause,  resting  on  a  supernatural  charter, 
led  on  by  an  omnipotent  Leader,  with  all  His  super- 
natural power  pledged  to  its  support  on  the  conditions 
of  consecration  and  prayer  on  the  part  of  its  human 
agents,  a  neglect  of  prayer  is  a  denial  of  the  Lord's 
leadership  and  a  wilful  limitation  of  success.  For  in 
all  the  missionary  work  of  God,  to  take  no  wider 
ground — if  there  be  any  wider  ground — all  success  and 
guidance  are  consequent  only  upon  prayer. 

It  was  so  in  the  history  of  the  early  Church,  whose 
development  for  years  was  almost  wholly  a  story  of 

467 


468       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

missionary  progress,  with  every  step  christened  and 
crowned  by  prayer.  The  first  and  the  last  recorded 
apostoUc  acts  after  the  Ascension  were  prayers — the 
gathering  in  the  upper  chamber  at  Jerusalem,  and 
John's  cry  from  Patmos,  "  Even  so,  come,  Lord 
Jesus !  "  The  disciples  did  not  first  of  all  take  up 
the  pen  to  preserve  the  memories  of  that  priceless  Life, 
nor  was  the  voice  of  the  world's  great  need  that  had 
brought  that  Life  to  earth  strong  enough  to  call  away 
their  thoughts.  First  of  all  they  sought  the  Lord's 
feet  in  prayer,  and  in  the  Pentecostal  hour  the 
first  mighty  flood  of  missionary  power  rolled  over  the 
missionary  band,  manifesting  its  character,  its  mean- 
ing, and  its  might  in  the  converted  thousands  of  that 
day.  And  not  only  did  prayer  secure  the  promised 
power,  but  it  converted  and  equipped  the  workers  in 
the  mission  cause.  It  was  in  the  days  that  they  all 
continued  with  one  accord  in  prayer  and  supplication, 
and  after  direct  request  for  guidance,  that  Matthias 
was  chosen  to  fill  the  place  of  him  who  was  guide  to 
them  that  took  Jesus.  The  seven  deacons ;  Barnabas 
and  Saul,  after  their  separation  to  foreign  service  by 
the  Holy  Ghost ;  the  elders  chosen  at  the  close  of  their 
first  missionary  journey — none  of  these  ventured  over 
the  threshold  of  their  work  without  the  preparation  of 
prayer.  And  it  was  in  prayer  that  new  departures 
were  taken.  Cornelius  at  Cesarea,  and  Simon  Peter 
upon  the  house-top  of  Joppa,  caught  in  prayer  the 
commands  that  opened  the  door  of  faith  to  the  Gentiles. 
Prayer  formally  marked  the  inception  of  the  first  mis- 
sionary tour,  as  it  had  brought  the  impulse  of  his  life 
to  the  first  great  missionary.  "  And  it  came  to  pass 
that  when  T  was  come  again  to  Jerusalem,  even  while 
I  prayed  in  the  temple,  T  was  in  a  trance  *  *  * 
and  He  said  unto  me,  depart,  for  I  will  send  thee  far 


Prayer  and  Missions  4^9 

hence  unto  the  Gentiles."  And  lastly  it  was  to  prayer 
that  in  time  of  need  those  early  workers  invariably  re- 
sorted. Peter  kneels  down  by  the  death-bed  of  Dor- 
cas, when  he  would  have  the  knowledge  of  the  gospel's 
power,  already  declared  at  the  beautiful  gate  of  the 
temple  in  Jerusalem,  revealed  at  Joppa,  by  a  manifest 
resurrection  from  the  dead.  Prayer,  made  without  ceas- 
ing of  the  Church  unto  God  for  Peter,  opens  Herod's 
dungeon  doors  and  sets  the  apostle  free.  The  Philip- 
pian  prison  shakes,  the  doors  hang  ajar,  the  prisoners' 
bonds  burst  asunder  amid  the  midnight  prayers  of 
Silas  and  Paul.  And  on  the  last  page  of  the  record, 
Publius's  father's  bloody  flux  departs  in  prayer.  With 
everything  thus  begun,  continued,  and  ended  in  prayer; 
marking  every  emergency,  guiding  every  progressive 
step,  animating  every  act  of  wider  obedience,  is  it  any 
wonder  that  when  the  flames  of  missionary  zeal  and 
success  sank  away,  it  was  because  the  fires  of  prayer 
had  died  low  on  the  altars  of  devotion?  Is  there  any 
other  reason  than  this  for  the  reiterated  plea  in  the 
Epistles  of  Paul,  that  the  churches  he  had  founded 
would  labour  together  with  him  in  prayer  for  the  pros- 
perity of  the  gospel  with  them  and  with  him  and 
in  all  the  world  ?  The  first  two  things  in  the  early 
Church  were  prayer  and  missions,  and  the  deepest  al- 
liance in  the  early  Church  was  between  missions  and 
prayer. 

And  not  only  so,  but  whenever  in  subsequent  cen- 
turies the  Church  has  caught  something  of  the  spirit 
of  those  early  days  it  has  been  manifested  in  a  new 
devotion  to  missions  and  a  revival  of  prayer.  It  must 
necessarily  be  so,  for  His  spirit  is  a  spirit  of  service 
and  communion,  of  missions  and  prayer.  And  com- 
munion without  service  is  a  dream,  and  service  with- 
out communion,  ashes.     It  is  only,  therefore,  in  ac- 


470       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

cordancc  with  a  very  general  truth  that  we  trace  the 
foundation  of  our  present  missionary  organizations  to 
times  of  revival,  which  were  also  times  of  awakened 
prayer.  Almost  the  first  breathings  of  the  modern 
missionary  period  were  in  1723,  when  Robert  Millar, 
I'resbyterian  minister  in  Paisley,  published  The  His- 
tory of  the  Propagation  of  Christianity  and  the  Ovcr- 
throzv  of  Paganism,  in  which  he  powerfully  urged 
prayer  as  the  first  of  nine  means  for  "  the  conversion 
of  the  heathen  world."  In  October,  1744,  after  some 
of  the  famous  revivals  of  1742,  in  the  West  country, 
a  band  of  nineteen  united  in  what  they  called  "  a  con- 
cert to  promote  more  abundant  application  to  a  duty 
that  is  perpetually  binding — prayer  that  our  God's 
kingdom  may  come,  joined  with  praises."  In  1784, 
at  a  periodical  meeting  of  the  Northamptonshire  As- 
sociation of  Baptist  Ministers  on  motion  of  John 
Sutcliff,  a  plan  drawn  up  by  John  Ryland,  Jr., 
was  addressed  to  the  churches,  which  urged, 
among  other  things,  "  Let  the  whole  interest  of  the 
Redeemer  be  affectionately  remembered,  and  the 
spread  of  the  gospel  to  the  most  distant  parts  of  the 
habitable  globe  be  the  object  of  your  most  fervent 
requests."  On  this  occasion  Andrew  Fuller  preached 
his  first  printed  sermon  on  "  Walking  by  Faith."  Two 
years  afterward  William  Carey  was  baptized  in  the 
Nen  by  the  same  John  Ryland,  and  ordained  by 
Andrew  Fuller  to  the  ministry  at  Moulton  village.  It 
was  out  of  all  this  prayer  and  revival  that  Carey  and 
his  little  band  of  Baptist  ministers  addressed  them- 
selves to  the  task  of  evangelizing  the  world.  Further 
still,  the  London  IMissionary  Society  was  founded  in 
1795,  for  non-Baptist  churches,  as  the  direct  result  of 
William  Carey's  work,  and  was  itself  conceived  by  Dr. 
Bogue    and    Mr.    Stephens    and    founded    in    prayer. 


Prayer  and  Missions  471 

Long  before  this,  even  in  1732,  as  the  result  of  four 
years'  prayer,  the  first  Moravian  missionaries  went 
out  from  Herrnhut.  And  lastly,  in  1806,  a  year  full 
of  missionary  impulse,  in  answer  to  prayer,  came  the 
famous  prayer-meeting  in  the  shadow  of  Greylock,  of 
which  Dr.  Griffin,  a  president  of  Williams  College, 
said :  "  I  have  been  in  situations  to  know  that  from 
the  councils  formed  in  that  sacred  conclave  or  from 
the  mind  of  Mills  himself,  arose  the  American  Board 
of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions,  the  American 
Bible  Society,  and  the  African  School  under  the  care 
of  the  Synod  of  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  besides 
all  the  impetus  given  to  domestic  missions,  to  the 
Colonization  Society,  and  to  the  general  cause  of 
benevolence  in  both  hemispheres." 

And  not  only  has  prayer  played  the  supreme  part 
in  the  formation  of  missionary  agencies,  but  it  has 
been  at  the  bottom  of  all  revivals  in  missionary  work. 
The  upheaval  in  the  training-school  at  Kyoto,  Japan, 
March  16,  1883,  whose  influence  has,  perhaps,  shaped 
the  whole  subsequent  Christian  development  of  Japan, 
the  out-poured  floods  in  the  Lone  Star  Mission  among 
the  Telegus,  the  movement  among  the  Mahrattas  in 
India  on  the  first  Monday  in  January,  1833,  the  inci- 
dents of  1846  in  Miss  Fiske's  school  at  Urumia,  the 
work  of  Michaelis  of  the  Gossner  Society  in  Java, 
and  the  revival  wave  that  swept  over  Turkey  in  1888 — 
all  these  had  no  sufficient  explanation  save  that  sup- 
plied by  the  power  of  definite  and  believing  prayer. 

And  we  may  go  a  step  further  than  this,  and 
assert  that  through  men  who  knew  how  to  pray  has 
every  new  departure  and  development  of  missions, 
which  has  borne  in  any  real  sense  the  marks 
of  God's  leading,  been  effected.  First  of  all,  the 
PQCupation   of    new    fields.      It    was   the    potency   of 


472       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

prayer  as  much  as  of  cannon  that  demolished 
to  dust  the  walls  of  Chinese  seclusion.  The  be- 
ginning of  the  great  work  in  Japan  was  traced  to  a 
little  room  where  the  missionaries  met  every  day  to 
pray.  In  1770,  seven  years  after  the  death  of  Freder- 
ick Boemisch,  the  first  of  the  missionary  triumvirate 
which  had  gone  to  Greenland  to  uphold  the  hands  of 
Egede,  John  Beck  wrote  to  Matthew  Stach,  recalling 
the  history  of  their  early  life's  work.  "  We  three  it 
was,"  he  says,  "  who  made  that  solemn  vow,  one  with 
another,  wholly  to  follow  our  Lord  in  this  land.  How 
many  times  we  besought  Him,  with  weeping,  to  grant 
us  one  soul  of  this  nation.  But  He  stopped  not  at  one. 
These  congregations  which  we  have  seen  grow  up 
from  the  beginning,  how  far  do  they  exceed  all  our 
early  prayers !  "  Allen  Gardiner  transfigured  the  initial 
steps  of  the  work  in  Terra  del  Fuego  with  prayer. 
There  is  a  paper  written  by  him  on  his  birthday,  in 
which  he  says :  "  I  pray  that  Thou  wouldst  graciously 
prepare  a  way  for  the  entrance  of  Thy  servants  among 
the  poor  heathen  of  these  islands,  *  *  *  ^^^ 
should  we  even  languish  and  die  here,  I  beseech  Thee 
to  raise  up  others  and  to  send  forth  labourers  into  this 
harvest."  The  translations  of  the  Bible,  which  have 
gone  on  their  errand,  under  God's  blessing,  have  been 
made  by  men  who  knew  how — to  borrow  Neesima's 
phrase — to  advance  upon  their  knees. 

Of  course  it  has  ever  been  through  prayer  that  the 
missionaries  have  been  secured,  and  it  was  thither, 
consequently,  that  Bishop  Patteson  resorted  when  he 
set  apart  George  Sarawia,  praying  that  "  he  might  be 
but  the  first  of  a  goodly  band  of  Melanesian  clergymen 
to  carry  the  gospel  to  their  people."  This  was  the 
only  source  of  missionary  supply  recognized  by  Christ 
— "  Pray  ye,  therefore,  the   Lord  of  the  harvest  to 


Prayer  and  Missions  473 

thrust  forth  labourers  in  His  harvest."  And  seeking 
them  in  any  way  which  neglects  the  unceasing  search 
of  prayer  is  not  the  Lord's  way.  The  first  woman  ever 
sent  from  America  as  a  medical  missionary  declared 
her  departure  for  the  lightless  lands  to  be  the  result 
of  her  early  pastor's  prayers.  The  day  appointed  by 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  1885  to  pray  for 
workers  was  anticipated,  even  the  evening  before 
the  formal  meeting,  by  one  hundred  university 
graduates,  who  dedicated  themselves  to  the  foreign 
missionary  work,  and  declared  themselves  ready  to 
go  when  their  studies  were  completed.  Before  they 
called  He  answered,  and  while  they  were  yet  speaking 
He  heard.  God  alone  knows  how,  replying  to  prayer, 
He  sent  out  the  hundred  workers  asked  by  the  China 
Inland  Mission  in  1887.  David  Temple  and  William 
Goodell  went  out  to  the  foreign  field  from  a  little 
group  of  half  a  dozen  who  met  for  prayer  around 
an  old  tree  stump  at  Andover,  eighty  years  ago.  And 
if  a  clearer  indication  than  these  is  needed  of  God's 
way  of  leading  out  His  workers,  it  is  found  in  the 
words  of  Paton's  parents  to  their  son  as  he  was  de- 
ciding the  question  of  his  duty  to  the  heathen,  "  When 
you  were  given  to  us,  we  laid  you  upon  the  altar,  our 
first  born,  to  be  consecrated,  if  God  saw  fit,  as  a  mis- 
sionary of  the  Cross ;  and  it  has  been  our  constant 
prayer  that  you  might  be  prepared,  qualified,  and  led 
to  this  very  decision,"  If  the  Church  must  resort 
chiefly  to  prayer  for  the  missionary  workers,  workers 
and  Church  must  labour  together  in  prayer  for  the 
desired  conversions ;  and  foreign  work  as  a  rule  has 
been  less  fruitful  in  such  results  where  the  Church  has 
least  lavished  her  prayers. 

Only  the  great  cloud  of  witnesses  who  have  been 
familiar  with  all  the  trials  of  God's  missionaries  from 


474        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  day  Paul  was  cast  out  for  dead  at  Lystra  to  the 
sufferings  caused  by  the  last  Chinese  uprising,  know 
how  many  lives  have  been  saved,  how  many  dangers 
have  been  avoitled,  how  many  perils  passed  on  the 
highway  of  prayer.  The  deliverances  of  1839  in  the 
Turkish  Empire,  and  the  preservation  of  faith  among 
the  fagots  and  llames  of  persecution  at  Uganda,  were 
alike  advantages  brought  to  the  kingdom  of  God  by 
prayer.  There  is  no  other  way  than  this  to  fill  the 
treasuries  of  mission  boards  and  supply  the  means 
for  an  immensely  widened  work  in  the  foreign  field. 
Nor  is  this  merely  a  Christian  truth  which  no  experi- 
ence has  ever  proved.  Pastor  Gossner  sent  out  into 
the  foreign  field  144  missionaries.  Besides  providing 
outfit  and  passage,  he  had  never  less  than  twenty  mis- 
sionaries dependent  directly  upon  him  for  support. 
How  he  carried  on  this  and  his  other  Christian  work,  a 
sentence  from  the  funeral  address  read  over  his  grave 
will  explain :  "  He  prayed  up  the  walls  of  a  hospital 
and  the  hearts  of  the  nurses ;  he  prayed  mission  sta- 
tions into  being  and  missionaries  into  faith ;  he  prayed 
open  the  hearts  of  the  rich,  and  gold  from  the  most 
distant  lands."  "  When  I  sent  you  without  purse  and 
scrip  and  shoes,  lacked  ye  anything?  And  they  said, 
Nothing."  It  is  the  voice  of  Him  to  whom  belong 
the  silver  and  the  gold,  and  the  cattle  on  a  thousand 
hills. 

The  first  thing  in  the  life  of  the  convert  must  be 
prayer.  The  mission  that  is  not  a  training-school  of 
prayer  may  accomplish  much  in  civilizing  and  enlight- 
ening, but  it  will  be  little  of  a  spiritual  power  in  its 
land.  Nothing  but  the  intimacy  of  communion  and 
the  answering  strength  involved  in  taking  tuition 
under  Him  who  is  to  teach  men  to  pray  will  ever  hold 
the  missionary  convert  in  the  midst  of  overwhelming 


Prayer  and  Missions  475 

temptations,  or  make  him  for  God  a  man  of  spiritual 
power.  Things  were  only,  as  in  God's  way  they  must 
be,  when  in  the  revivals  of  1872,  in  Japan,  students 
in  the  schools  of  Japan,  and  in  the  colleges  of  prayer, 
so  besought  God  with  tears  in  one  of  the  meetings  at 
Yokohama,  that  He  would  pour  out  His  spirit  on  Japan 
as  at  Pentecost,  that  captains  of  men-of-war,  English 
and  American,  who  were  present  remarked,  "  The 
prayers  of  these  Japanese,  take  the  hearts  out  of  us," 
and  the  lirst  Japanese  congregation  of  eleven  converts 
sprang  out  of  those  prayers ;  or  when  the  prime  min- 
ister of  the  bloody  queen  of  Madagascar,  endeavour- 
ing to  enforce  her  terrible  edicts  against  the  Chris- 
tians, was  confronted  by  his  own  nephew's  declaration, 
"  I  am  a  Christian,  and  if  you  will  you  may  put  me 
to  death,  for  I  must  pray." 

Even  more  clearly  can  this  alliance  of  prayer 
and  missions  be  traced  in  the  lives  of  individual 
missionaries.  It  may  not  be  possible  to  judge  of  out- 
ward success ;  it  is  possible  to  know  the  measure  of 
inward  fidelity  from  the  place  which  prayer  occupies 
in  the  missionary's  life,  and  yet,  "  I  do  desire  to  say, 
gravely  and  earnestly,"  says  a  missionary  of  the  Amer- 
ican Board,  "  that  my  missionary  life  has  been  suc- 
cessful so  far  as  I  have  been  prayerful,  and  non-suc- 
cessful so  far  as  in  prayerfulness  I  have  been  lax." 
Foremost  among  these  praycr-souled  men  of  missions 
stands  David  Brainerd.  In  his  diary  he  writes :  "  God 
enabled  me  so  to  agonize  in  prayer  that  I  was  quite 
wet  with  perspiration,  though  in  the  shade  and  in  the 
cool  wind.  My  soul  was  drawn  out  very  much  from 
the  world  for  multitudes  of  souls."  And  in  1747 
he  left  a  dying  injunction  for  his  beloved  Christian 
Indians  that  at  the  monthly  missionary  concert,  which 
the  year  before  had  been  recommended  from  Scotland, 


476       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

they  should  pray  for  "  the  conversion  of  the  world." 
Such  a  man  was  John  Hunt,  with  his  death  bed  cry : 
"Oh,  let  me  pray  for  Fiji!  Lord,  save  Fiji!"  and 
Adoniram  Judson,  whose  only  testimony,  after  a  long 
life  of  deep  experience,  was,  "  I  never  was  deeply 
interested  in  any  object,  I  never  prayed  sincerely  and 
earnestly  for  anything,  but  it  came  at  some  time — no 
matter  how  distant  the  day — somehow,  in  some  shape, 
probably  the  last  I  should  have  devised — it  came !  " 
Dr.  Goodell's  appeal,  "  Let  it  be  known,  too,  that  more, 
apparently,  can  be  done  now  by  prayer  than  in  any 
other  way.  Whoever  prays  most,  helps  most "  was 
only  an  expression  of  his  own  life.  It  was  by  prayer 
that  Paton  was  led  into  the  missionary  service;  by 
prayer  he  won  the  hearts  of  degraded  men ;  by  prayer 
he  dug  wells  and  found  fresh  water  where  others 
found  none  or  salt;  by  prayer  he  checked  the  hand  of 
the  assassin ;  by  prayer  he  locked  the  jaws  of  violence ; 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  will  be  in  the  hush  of  prayer 
that  he  will  fall  asleep.  From  no  other  source  than 
this  could  Mackay  ever  have  gained  strength  for  the 
life  of  unwearied,  unmeasured  usefulness  he  laid  down 
at  Uganda.  Regarding  his  prayer,  his  companion, 
Ashe,  says :  "  Mackay's  prayer  was  very  childlike,  full 
of  simple  trust  and  supplication.  Very  humble,  very 
meek,  very  childlike,  he  was  on  his  knees  before  God." 
How  much  David  Livingstone  prayed  may  be  inferred 
from  brief  glimpses,  here  and  there  in  his  journals, 
into  the  holy  place  in  his  life.  He  records  on  April 
29,  1866,  an  answer  to  some  prayers  of  his  for  influence 
on  the  minds  of  the  heathen.  He  began  different  years 
of  his  diaries  with  a  prayer.  Thus,  Jan.  i,  1868,  "  Al- 
mighty Father,  forgive  the  sins  of  the  past  year  for 
Thy  Son's  sake.  Help  me  to  be  more  profitable  during 
this  year.    If  I  am  to  die  this  year,  prepare  me  for  it." 


Prayer  and  Missions  477 

He  wrote  prayers  on  his  birthdays,  too,  as  March  19, 
1872,  the  next  to  the  last  of  his  birthdays.  "  My  Jesus, 
my  King,  my  Life,  my  All,  I  again  dedicate  my  whole 
self  to  Thee.  Accept  me  and  grant,  oh,  gracious 
Father,  that  ere  this  year  is  gone  I  may  finish  my 
task.  In  Jesus's  name  I  ask  it.  Amen.  So  let  it 
be.  David  Livingstone."  And  on  the  last  birthday  of 
all,  "  Let  not  Satan  prevail  over  me,  oh,  my  good  Lord 
Jesus !  "  And  when  the  worn  and  wasted  figure  was 
found  dead,  it  was  in  the  attitude  of  prayer.  Even 
in  that  last  hour  he  had  knelt  down  by  his  bedside 
at  Ilala  to  commend,  with  one  dying  eflfort,  the  world's 
open  sore  to  the  Redeemer  of  the  oppressed  and  the 
Saviour  of  the  lost.  There  are  more  martyrs  than 
those  who  have  poured  out  their  blood  or  burned  at 
the  stake  for  Christ  and  His  Church.  They,  too,  are 
martyrs  who  have  poured  out  their  lives  in  service  and 
their  souls  in  the  agony  of  prayer  that  the  Son  of 
God  and  His  kingdom  may  come.  And  as  Sabbath 
by  Sabbath  a  great  branch  of  the  Church  sings  those 
glorious  words,  "  The  noble  army  of  martyrs,  praise 
Thee,"  it  is  simply  the  confident  assertion  that  those 
who  served  Him  here  in  the  ministry  of  toil  and  also 
in  the  ministry  of  prayer  have  taken  up  the  ministry 
of  praise  and  of  prayer  in  the  land  where  His  servants 
shall  still  serve  Him. 

The  connection  between  prayer  and  missions  has 
been  traced  thus  over  the  whole  field  of  missionary 
conditions,  simply  to  show  that  every  element  in  the 
missionary  problem  of  to-day  depends  for  its  solution 
chiefly  upon  prayer.  The  assertion  has  been  frequently 
made  in  past  years,  that  with  20,000  men,  properly 
qualified  and  distributed,  the  world  could  be  evangel- 
ized in  thirty  years.  And  actually  there  is  need  of 
an  immediate  undaunted  effort  to  secure  20,000  men. 


478       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Neither,  perhaps,  can  the  world  be  evanj^elized  with- 
out them,  nor  can  they  be  secured  without  effort.  But 
it  is  hopeless  to  endeavour  to  obtain  them,  and  they 
will  be  worthless  if  obtained,  unless  the  whole  effort 
be  inspired  and  permeated  with  prayer.  "  Thrust 
Thou  forth  Thy  labourers  into  the  harvest."  Or  with 
the  world  open  and  men  offering',  and  treasuries  de- 
pleted, the  missionary  agents  of  the  Church  may 
sometimes  feel  that  the  great  need  is  a  consecration 
of  wealth  to  the  world-wide  service  of  Christ ;  and 
surely  He  does  still  plead  that  the  tithes  be  brought 
into  the  store-house  and  His  readiness  to  pour  out 
a  blessing  tested  therewith,  but  money  is  not  the  great 
need.  The  evangelization  of  the  world  in  this  genera- 
tion depends  first  of  all  upon  a  revival  of  prayer. 
Deeper  than  the  need  for  men ;  deeper,  far,  than  the 
need  for  money ;  deep  down  at  the  bottom  of  our 
spiritless  life  is  the  need  for  the  forgotten  secret  of 
prevailing,  world-wide  prayer.  Missions  have  pro- 
gressed slowly  abroad,  because  piety  and  prayer  have 
been  shallow  at  home.  "  When  I  shall  see  Christians 
all  over  the  world,"  said  John  Foster,  "  resolved  to 
prove  what  shall  be  the  efficacy  of  prayer  for  the  con- 
version of  the  world,  I  shall  begin  to  think  that  the 
millennium  is  at  the  door."  The  condition  and  con- 
sequence of  such  prayers  as  this  is  a  new  outpouring 
of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Nothing  short  of  His  own  sug- 
gestion will  prompt  the  necessary  prayer  to  bring  Him 
back  again  in  power.  Nothing  short  of  His  new  out- 
pouring will  ever  solve  the  missionary  problems  of  our 
day.  The  first  call  ever  sent  out  for  the  annual  wee!-: 
of  prayer  came  from  the  mission  field,  and  was  de- 
signed to  unite  the  whole  Christian  world  in  earnest 
prayer  for  the  promised  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  upon 
all  nations ;  and  yet,  year  by  year  the  idea  has  been 


Prayer  and   Missions  479 

practically  ignored,  so  that  on  one  occasion  the  ad- 
vance call  contained  no  allusion  to  the  Holy  Spirit  at 
all.  There  has  been  in  our  own  day  more  than  one 
unconscious  manifestation  of  the  same  spirit  which 
more  than  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  when  the  King 
of  Denmark  issued  a  letter  ordering  a  petition  for  mis- 
sions in  India  and  Denmark  to  be  introduced  into  the 
church  prayers,  quickly  found  expression  in  hostility 
and  disobedience. 

Considering  the  fearful  consequences  of  it  all,  some- 
thing like  criminal  negligence  has  marked  for  years 
the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  the  matchless  power 
of  prayer  for  the  world.  Shall  it  be  so  longer  or  shall 
a  change  come  over  the  Church?  It  will  not  avail  to 
pass  resolutions  and  form  prayer  alliances.  For  gen- 
erations great  calls  have  been  issued,  leagues  have  been 
proposed,  emotions  have  been  aroused,  and  yet  the 
days  continue  as  they  were ;  the  kingdom  of  God 
moves  faster,  but  slowly  still,  and  prayer  is  an  echo 
on  men's  lips  rather  than  a  passion  from  their  hearts. 
But  if  fifty  men  of  our  generation  will  enter  the  holy 
place  of  prayer,  and  become,  henceforth,  men  whose 
hearts  God  has  touched  with  the  prayer-passion,  the 
history  of  His  Church  will  be  changed. 

Ry  the  wicked  neglect  of  a  life  that  misses  the  first 
things  in  prayer,  and  that  never  strains  the  heart- 
strings of  its  devotion  over  the  world,  shall  we  virtually 
beseech  Him :  "  Let  not  Thy  Kingdom  come ;  stop 
the  Macedonian  cry;  close  the  doors  of  access 
to  the  heathen :  bind  up  the  purse  strings  of  the 
Church  and  palsy  the  feet  of  missionaries  upon  the 
threshold ;  let  the  world's  millions  go  on  to  death  ?  " 
or,  in  lives  that  linger  ceaselessly  before  the  Lord,  shall 
we  pour  out  our  souls  in  John  Milton's  sublime  prayer: 
"  The  times  and  seasons  pass  along  under  Thy  feet  and 


480       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

go  and  come  at  Thy  bidding;  and  as  Thou  didst  dig- 
nify our  father's  days  with  many  revelations  above  all 
the  foregoing  ages  since  Thou  tookest  the  flesh,  so 
Thou  canst  vouchsafe  to  us,  though  unworthy,  as 
large  a  portion  of  Thy  Spirit  as  Thou  pleasest;  for 
who  shall  prejudice  Thy  all-governing  will?  seeing  the 
power  of  Thy  grace  is  not  passed  away  with  the  primi- 
tive times,  as  bold  and  faithless  men  imagine,  but  Thy 
kingdom  is  now  at  hand,  and  Thou  standing  at  the 
door.  Come  forth  out  of  Thy  royal  chambers,  O 
Prince  of  all  the  kings  of  the  earth;  put  on  the  visible 
robes  of  Thy  imperial  majesty;  take  up  that  unlimited 
sceptre  which  Thy  Almighty  Father  hath  bequeathed 
Thee :  for  now  the  voice  of  Thy  Bride  calls  Thee,  and 
all  creatures  sigh  to  be  renewed."  Of  far  greater 
service  than  any  array  of  learning  or  gifts  of  eloquence ; 
more  to  be  desired  than  gold  and  fine  gold ;  more  to 
be  sought  than  a  great  name,  or  apparent  opportunities 
for  large  usefulness;  of  deeper  significance  than  high 
intellectual  attainment,  or  power  of  popular  influence, 
is  this  gift — may  God  give  it  to  each  one  of  us ! — the 
secret  and  sweetness  of  unceasing,  prevailing,  tri- 
umphant prayer  for  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ. 


XLII 

THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  AND  MISSIONS 

BEFORE  our  Lord  went  away,  He  told  His 
disciples,  crushed  at  the  thought  of  His  de- 
parture, that  it  was  best  that  He  should  leave 
them — best  for  Himself,  best  for  them,  best  for 
the  world — that,  unless  He  went  away,  the  Holy  Spirit 
should  not  come ;  but  that  if  He  went,  the  Holy  Spirit 
would  be  sent  to  remind  them  constantly  of  Him,  to 
enable  them  to  see  His  beauty  as  they  had  never  seen 
it  when  they  had  walked  with  Him  by  the  hills  and  run- 
ning brooks  of  Palestine,  to  bring  back  to  their  recol- 
lection constantly  the  things  that  He  had  said,  to  guide 
them  in  all  their  ways,  to  equip  them  for  all  their 
work  and  to  send  them  out  in  His  Name  unto  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  We  must  wish — I  pre- 
sume we  have  wished — that  our  Lord  had  never  gone, 
that  we  could  have  Him  with  us  still.  Our  yearning 
for  the  day  when  the  Eastern  skies  shall  glow  with 
the  promise  of  His  coming,  is  only  the  proof  of  our 
inner  desire  that  between  Him  and  us  there  should  be 
no  separation  at  all.  He  told  us  Himself  that  it  was 
better  that  He  should  go;  and  that  in  His  stead  we 
should  "be  controlled  and  guided  here  by  the  Holy 
Spirit,  who  would  be  sent.  There  can  be  then,  surely, 
no  more  important  subject  for  our  study — not  even, 
the  subject  of  prayer  and  missions, — than  the  rela- 
tionship between  the  Holy  Ghost,  whom  Jesus  Christ 
sent,  and  this  enterprise  in  which  we  are  engaged. 

Historically,  there  has  been  no  closer  relationship. 
Even  as  our  Lord  promised,  as  the  disciples  tarried  in 
Jerusalem,    waiting   until    the   day   of   Pentecost   was 

481 


482        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

fully  come,  and  were  all  together  in  one  place,  there 
was  suddenly  "  the  sound  as  of  the  rushing  of  a  mighty 
wind,  and  it  filled  all  the  house  where  they  were  sitting. 
And  there  appeared  unto  them  tongues,  divided 
asunder  like  as  of  fire ;  and  it  abode  upon  each  of  them, 
and  they  were  all  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost."  Con- 
strained of  Him,  bound  by  Him,  led  of  Him  in  all  their 
enterprise,  they  went  out,  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ 
their  Lord,  to  preach  His  Gospel  to  every  creature  un- 
der heaven.  As  Dr.  A.  J-  Gordon  said,  "  Whenever,  in 
any  period  of  the  Chinese  history  a  little  company  has 
sprung  up  so  surrendered  to  the  Spirit,  and  so  filled 
with  His  presence  as  to  furnish  the  pliant  instruments 
of  His  will,  then  a  new  Pentecost  has  dawned  in  Chris- 
tendom ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  Great  Commission 
has  been  republished,  and  following  a  fresh  tarrying  in 
Jerusalem,  for  the  endowment  of  power,  has  been  a 
fresh  witnessing  for  Christ  from  Jerusalem  unto  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth." 

In  principle  it  must  be  so.  This  enterprise  in  which 
we  have  engaged  is  a  spiritual  one ;  it  contemplates  a 
spiritual  end.  We  believe  that  there  is  no  other  way 
to  bless  the  homes  of  men,  that  there  is  no  other  way 
to  cleanse  the  states  of  men,  than  by  the  gospel  of 
Christ.  But  we  contemplate  in  this  enterprise,  the 
same  purpose  which  thrilled  the  heart  of  Christ. 
We  go  out,  as  He  came  that  man  may  have  life  and 
may  have  it  more  abundantly.  The  methods  of  our 
work  are  spiritual  methods.  "  Not  by  an  army,  nor 
by  power  " — social,  political  or  financial — "  but  by  My 
Spirit,  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts."  The  motives  of  the 
enterprise  are  spiritual.  We  seek  no  wealth  or  fame; 
we  desire  no  reputation  or  earthly  power.  We  are 
constrained  only  by  the  love  of  Christ.  When,  there- 
fore, we  look  backward  over  the  history  of  Christ's 


The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions  483 

Church  we  are  shown  that  no  relationship  can  be 
closer  than  that  which  ties  this  enterprise  of  the  world's 
evangelization  to  the  living  Spirit  of  the  loving  God. 

Who  but  the  Holy  Spirit  can  reveal  to  the  Church 
her  real  missionary  character?  We  believe  that  evan- 
gelization is  the  primary  duty  of  the  Church.  We  be- 
lieve as  a  noble  old  writer  of  the  Church  of  England 
declared  in  a  generation  that  has  passed  away,  that 
"  the  Christian  Church  is  a  Society,  a  Brotherhood,  a 
Fellowship.  The  very  charter  of  its  incorporation 
coutains  a  command  for  its  extension.  The  very  end 
of  its  existence  is  the  conversion  of  the  whole  world  to 
communion  with  itself.  Christianity  is  the  world's 
leaven ;  it  is  a  growing  light,  it  is  a  diffusive  love ;  and 
every  member  of  the  Christian  Church  is  called  to  be  a 
herald  and  a  preacher  of  its  faith.  The  love  of  Christ 
constrains  him ;  that  with  which  he  is  baptized  is  as 
fire,  and  will  bum,  and  burning  it  will  enlighten  and 
inflame.  A  man  who  has  felt  the  blessing  of  the 
gospel  in  his  own  soul  cannot  but  be  anxious  to  impart 
it  to  his  brethren.  In  every  Christian  heart,  be  assured, 
Christianity  will  find  a  new  missionary,  and,  if  need  be, 
a  new  martyr."  We  believe  with  Fleming  Stevenson  : 
"  If  the  World  of  God  does  not  merely  contain  here 
and  there  a  missionary  chapter,  or  the  music  of  a  mis- 
sionary psalm,  or  some  clear  word  of  prophecy,  or 
more  clear  and  commanding  word  of  Christ,  but  is 
throughout  an  intensely  missionary  book,  the  mission- 
ary spirit  being  of  the  very  essence  of  its  revelation ; 
if  it  is  a  book  that  responds,  with  the  sensitiveness  of  a 
divine  sympathy,  to  the  cry  of  the  lost  but  seeking 
spirit,  to  the  burdened  sigh  of  pagan  Asia,  as  well  as 
to  the  anguish  of  those  that  doubt  and  yearn  in  Europe 
and  America ;  if  it  is  a  book  that  proclaims,  with  every 
one  of  its  tongues  of  fire,  that  there  is  a  Kingdom  of 


484       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

God  to  grow  out  from  it,  instinct  with  its  own  spirit, 
a  kingdom  of  living  men  in  whom  its  revelation  will 
be  seen  in  action,  by  whom  its  sympathy  and  its  offer 
of  life  and  rest  will  be  borne  to  every  nation,  in  whom 
the  great  hunger  for  the  redemption  of  the  world 
has  struck  so  deep  that  every  one  who  is  of  that  king- 
dom must  hunger  with  the  same  intensity  and  look  out 
on  the  world  with  the  very  eyes  of  Christ,  and  see,  not 
in  dreams  and  fancies  of  the  poets,  but  by  faith — faith 
which  is  no  dreamer,  but  real  and  practical,  carving 
swiftly  the  way  to  its  own  end — see,  by  faith,  the 
march  of  the  peoples  back  to  God,  the  idols  flung 
aside,  and  the  cry  of  all — 

"  Nothing  in  my  hand  I  bring, 
Simply  to  Thy  cross  I  cling  " ; 

if  that  is  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  then  even 
our  noble  missionary  societies  are  not  the  adequate 
expression  of  this  enterprise  of  Christian  missions,  but 
are  only  preparatory;  and  the  conception  of  a  mis- 
sionary society  we  are  to  keep  before  us  is  of  the 
Church  herself,  as  broad  as  the  Church,  as  manifold  as 
her  gifts,  as  numerous  as  her  membership,  and  as 
much  clothed  as  she  can  claim  to  be  with  power  from 
on  high.  That  in  theory  is  the  position  that  has  been 
taken  by  the  great  body  of  the  Church  of  Christ ;  and 
what  I  plead  for  is  nothing  more  than  that  this  theory 
should  be  wrouglit  into  practice.  Christian  people  have 
yet  to  feel  that  it  is  their  own  cause,  and  the  most 
sacred  and  lofty  cause  for  which  they  ever  fought. 

"  The  mission  is  not  an  organ  of  the  Church,  but 
the  Church  is  the  organ  of  the  mission,  divinely  ap- 
pointed, divinely  endowed,  divinely  dwelt  in.  The 
Church    has    been    consecrated    to    this    work    by    its 


The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions  485 

Master;  and  when  the  consecration  is  accepted,  pene- 
trating not  only  into  assemblies  and  councils,  but  into 
every  little  group  of  Christian  people — penetrating 
like  a  fire  that  burns  into  men's  souls  and  then  leaps 
out  in  flames  of  impulse  and  passionate  surrender, 
we  shall  see  the  mission  as  Christ  would  have  it  be. 
The  story  of  it,  and  the  pitiful  wail  of  Christless  men 
as  they  grope  in  their  millions  round  the  great  altar- 
stairs  for  God — and  more  pitiful  still  if  they  are  so 
blind  as  not  to  feel  their  blindness — will  be  poured  from 
every  pulpit ;  it  will  be  the  burden  of  daily  prayer  in 
every  Christian  home ;  every  one  will  study  for  himself, 
as  Canon  Westcott  recommended  the  other  day,  the 
annals  of  the  present  conquests  of  the  Cross ;  the  chil- 
dren will  grow  up,  believing  that  this  is  the  aim  for 
which  they  are  to  live,  and  Churches  will  meet  to  plan 
their  great  campaigns  and  send  out  the  best  and  ablest 
men  they  have  to  take  part  in  this  war  of  love." 

If  we  believe  that  the  Christian  Church  is  this,  who 
taught  us  this  belief  but  the  Spirit  of  God?  Who  but 
the  Spirit  of  God  was  in  Jesus  Christ,  speaking  of 
other  sheep  not  of  the  Jewish  fold,  and  fixing  the 
eyes  of  His  disciples  upon  the  outermost  of  the 
nations  ?  Who  but  the  Spirit  of  God  can  now  lift  the 
Church  out  of  narrowness  and  selfishness  into  the 
vision  of  her  world-wide  destiny,  as  it  lay  in  the  heart 
of  Christ. 

If,  on  the  one  side,  the  Holy  Spirit  alone  can  con- 
vince the  Church  of  her  missionary  character,  the  Holy 
Spirit  alone  can  prepare  the  world  for  the  Church's 
mission.  "  The  spirit  and  the  Bride  say  *  come  '  " — 
not  the  Spirit  only,  nor  the  Church  only.  Side  by  side 
with  the  Church's  voice,  calling  the  nations  to  their 
true  King,  the  Holy  Spirit  Himself  has  been  speaking, 
unsealing  the  closed  doors,  preparing  the  needy  hearts, 


4B6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

and  fittins^  the  world  to  receive  salvation  through  the 
Church's  witness  to  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord  and  the  world's  Lord. 

Consider  the  w^ay  in  which,  in  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth  the  Holy  Spirit  has  thus  gone  in  advance  of  the 
missionary  enterprise.  Missionaries  tell  of  African 
tribes  in  which  the  Redeemer  has  been  described  to 
the  hearts  of  men  before  missionaries  came  near  them. 
Adoniram  Judson,  going  out  in  the  year  1812,  with  his 
heart  burning  for  the  people  of  India,  was  turned  back 
first  of  all  from  Calcutta  through  the  instructions 
which  had  just  been  issued  by  the  Earl  of  Minto,  to  the 
effect  that  the  British  in  India  could  not  tolerate  any 
interference  with  the  religion  of  the  people,  and  that 
the  missionaries  in  Seringapatam  should  cease  from  at- 
tempting, by  printing  pamphlets,  to  lead  the  people 
away  from  their  ancient  faith.  Judson  went  back  to  the 
Isle  of  France  for  a  little  respite,  and  then  made  an- 
other attempt  to  land  at  Madras,  only  to  be  again 
turned  away.  Back  he  came  to  Moulmein,  and  was 
then  led  of  the  Spirit  of  God  to  the  Karens,  a  people 
prepared  for  the  Gospel  by  the  tradition  handed  down 
through  generations  that  white  teachers  would  come 
to  tell  of  the  Book  of  God.  Consider  the  way  within 
our  own  memory  the  Spirit  of  God  opened  the  doors  of 
Korea,  with  His  missionaries  standing  at  the  threshold 
waiting  to  go  in.  Think  of  Barnabas  Shaw  making 
thirty  days'  journey  from  the  Cape  into  the  heart  of 
Africa,  to  be  greeted  by  a  deputation  of  Hottentots, 
led  by  the  Divine  Spirit,  seeking  a  man  of  God  to 
preach  to  them. 

All  over  the  world,  the  Spirit  has  ever  moved  on  the 
hearts  of  Christian  men  inclining  them  to  turn  to  where 
prepared  hearts  awaited  llicm  and  preparing  them  for 
the  prepared  hearts.   Dr.  Griffith  John,  of  Hankow,  tells 


The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions  487 

how  it  had  been  laid  upon  his  heart  once  to  pray  for 
the  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost :  "  Feeling  my  lack  of 
spiritual  power,  I  spent  the  whole  of  Saturday  in  an 
earnest  prayer  for  a  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  On 
the  following  morning  I  preached  on  the  subject.  At 
the  close  of  the  service  I  proposed  that  we  should  meet 
for  an  hour  every  day  of  the  ensuing  week  to  pray  for 
a  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  From  fifty  to  seventy  of 
the  converts  met  day  by  day,  and  confessing  their  sins 
pleaded  with  tears  for  an  outpouring  of  the  Spirit 
of  God.  The  native  Church  at  Hankow  received  an 
impulse,  the  force  of  which  continues  to  this  day.  The 
Holy  Ghost  became  a  mighty  reality  to  many.  Where 
once  other  things  were  preached,  Christ  and  His  power 
became  a  living  reality."  Whether  we  look  at  the 
Church  or  at  the  world,  the  Spirit  of  God  alone  can 
equip  the  one  and  prepare  the  other;  and  the  Spirit 
of  God  can  alone  put  the  prepared  Church  into  the 
prepared  world. 

Only  the  Spirit  of  God  can  lift  the  churches  out  of 
their  worldliness  out  of  their  selfishness,  out  of  their 
self-indulgence,  into  such  a  vision  of  life  and  service 
as  was  displayed  by  Him,  who  though  He  was  on  an 
equality  with  God,  counted  not  that  equality  a  prize  to 
be  jealously  retained,  but  made  Himself  of  no  repu- 
tation took  on  Him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  be- 
came obedient  unto  death.  The  lust  of  the  flesh,  and 
the  lust  of  the  eyes,  and  the  pride  of  life,  that  are 
not  of  the  Father,  but  of  the  world,  are  marvellously 
seductive  in  their  appeal ;  and  only  that  Spirit  who 
counted  every  drop  that  fell  from  the  brow  of  Christ 
as  dearer  than  all  the  jewelled  gates  of  Paradise,  and 
who  so  esteems  all  sacrifice,  can  lift  the  Church  out 
of  her  appreciation  of  the  world — into  an  appreciation 
of  the  world  as  it  appeals  to  the  heart  of  God. 


488       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

Only  the  Spirit  of  God  can  give  to  the  hearts  of 
men  a  covetousness  after  the  example  of  Christ  that 
shall  make  them  desirous  of  walking  in  His  steps. 
Think  of  David  Brainerd  kneeling  down  under  the 
trees  by  the  banks  of  the  Delaware,  damp  with  the 
perspiration  of  his  prayers,  while  the  chill  winter  winds 
whistled  through  the  forest  above  him,  crying  out  in 
his  loneliness,  "  Here  am  I,  Lord,  send  me ;  send  me 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth;  send  me  to  the  rough  and 
savage  pagans  of  the  wilderness;  send  me  from  all 
that  is  called  comfort  in  the  earth ;  send  me  even  to 
death  itself;  if  it  be  but  in  Thy  service,  and  to  pro- 
mote Thy  kingdom."  Think  of  Raymond  Lull,  the 
first  great  missionary  to  the  Mohammedans,  more  than 
six  centuries  ago,  hearing  the  voice  of  Christ,  by  the 
Spirit,  calling  him  from  a  life  of  dissipation  and  sin, 
lifting  his  eyes  to  the  face  of  the  Crucified,  and  saying, 
"  To  Thee,  O  Lord  God,  I  oflfer  myself,  my  children, 
and  all  that  I  possess.  May  it  please  Thee  who  did 
so  humble  Thyself  to  the  death  of  the  cross  to  con- 
descend to  accept  all  that  I  give  Thee,  that  I,  and  my 
wife  and  my  children,  may  be  Thy  lowly  servants." 
Think  of  Mirza  Ibrahim  going  out  from  home  to 
preach  Christ  to  his  fellow  Moslems,  and  dying  under 
abuse  in  the  Persian  prison  of  Tabriz.  Think  of 
Lough  Fook,  the  Chinese  Christian,  who,  in  order  to 
reach  his  coolie  countrymen,  sold  himself  into  slavery 
in  the  mines  of  South  America,  and  gave  his  life  to 
preaching  the  gospel  to  his  enslaved  people,  walking  in 
the  footsteps  of  Him  who,  though  He  was  free, 
took  upon  Himself  the  form  of  a  slave.  I  say  that 
nothing  but  the  Spirit  of  God  in  Christ  which  led 
Him  to  stoop  to  the  death  of  the  cross,  will  lift  the 
men  and  women  of  the  Christian  Church  into  a  life  of 
compassion  and  sacrifice  like  Christ's. 


The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions  489 

Nothing  but  the  Spirit  of  God  will  teach  the  hearts 
of  men  that  every  Christian  has  a  call  to  missionary 
service.  Every  man  who  has  named  the  name  of 
Christ,  is  under  bonds  to  pass  Christ  on  to  the  world. 
I  would  recall  the  words  of  the  old  English  divine 
whom  I  quoted  a  moment  ago : 

"  And  the  way  in  which  the  gospel  would  seerA  to 
be  intended  to  be  alike  preserved  and  perpetuated  on 
earth  is  not  by  its  being  jealously  guarded  by  a  chosen 
Order  and  cautiously  communicated  to  a  precious 
Few,  but  by  being  so  widely  scattered  and  so  thickly 
sown  that  it  shall  be  impossible,  from  the  very  ex- 
tent of  its  spreading  merely,  to  be  rooted  up.  It  was 
designed  to  be  not  as  a  Perpetual  Fire  in  the  Temple, 
to  be  tended  with  jealous  assiduity  and  to  be  fed  only 
with  special  oil ;  but  rather  as  a  shining  and  burning 
Light,  to  be  set  up  on  every  hill,  which  should  blaze 
the  broader  and  the  brighter  in  the  breeze,  and  go  on 
so  spreading  over  the  surrounding  territory  as  that 
nothing  of  this  world  should  ever  be  able  to  extinguish 
or  to  conceal  it. 

"  And  the  office  of  teaching  and  preaching  the 
gospel  belongs  to  men,  not  to  a  Book,  to  the  Church 
emphatically,  though  not  to  the  clergy  only,  but 
to  every  member  of  it,  for  a  dispensation  of  the  gospel 
is  committed  to  every  Christian  and  woe  unto  him  if 
he  preach  not  the  gospel." 

And  how  shall  a  man  ever  learn  that  God  has  called 
him  personally  to  missionary  service,  save  as  the 
Spirit  of  God  makes  it  plain  to  his  heart  ?  The  way  in 
which  the  revelation  of  God's  call  to  us  shall  be  made 
plain  and  the  time  of  its  coming — these  are  secondary 
and  unimportant  in  comparison  with  the  great  truth 
that  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God  is  pressing  upon  the 
heart  of  the  Church — that  we  are  all  bound  in  obedience 


490       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  the  coniniand  of  Christ,  not  to  His  apostles  only,  but 
to  all  His  friends,  to  carry  the  message  of  His  world- 
wide love  to  every  soul  for  whom  He  died.  God  may 
call  a  man  before  He  sees  the  light  of  day,  as  He  called 
the  Apostle  Paul  while  he  was  still  in  his  mother's 
womb.  He  may  make  this  call  known  in  strange  or 
in  insignificant  ways.  He  may  work  in  long  and  ob- 
scure lines  of  iniluence.  The  essential  thing  is  that  by 
the  Spirit  of  God  a  man  should  gain  the  irresistible 
sense  that  the  general  duty  of  the  Church  is  his  per- 
sonal duty. 

What  I  have  written  has  been  leading  up  to  the 
one  thing  I  wish  to  say  with  chief  emphasis.  The 
Holy  Spirit's  relationship  to  this  missionary  enterprise 
is  most  vital,  because  He  alone  can  secure  for  Jesus 
Christ  that  place  which  He  must  have,  if  the  work 
is  ever  to  be  done.  We  sometimes  fall  into  the 
way  of  dissevering  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  from 
Christ.  The  Holy  Ghost  did  not  come  to  glorify  Him- 
self. "  When  He  is  come,"  said  Jesus,  "  He  shall  not 
speak  of  Himself,  but  He  shall  testify  of  Me.  He  shall 
bring  to  your  recollection  the  things  that  I  have  said." 
The  whole  purpose  of  the  Spirit's  work  is  to  glorify 
Jesus  Christ  and  to  secure  for  Christ,  in  the  hearts  of 
men,  the  place  that  Christ  must  have — to  quote  those 
fine  words  of  St.  Paul — "  that  in  all  things  He  may 
have  the  pre-eminence."  He  is  to  have  the  pre-emi- 
nence in  obedience,  that  we  may  count  everything  cheap 
in  comparison  with  complete  compliance  with  His  com- 
mand ;  the  pre-eminence  in  love,  that  our  hearts  may 
go  out  to  Him  in  full  passion.  We  need  a  great,  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  Christ.  Our  standards  of  con- 
ventional respectability  bind  us  in  such  enslavement, 
that  we  forget  to  be  warm  towards  Christ.  The  Holy 
Spirit  is  needed  in  this  work,  to  secure  for  Christ  a 


The  Holy  Spirit  and  Missions  491 

revival  of  that  old  medieval  tenderness  for  Him  which 
made  men  conceive  of  Him  as  a  very  Lover  of  their 
souls.  The  familiar  legend  was  that  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  bore,  at  last,  in  his  body,  the  very  marks  of 
Christ.  Why  should  he  not?  Why  should  not  men 
have  a  longing  after  Christ,  so  life-engulfing  that  they 
should  bear  about  in  their  bodies  the  very  marks  of 
Christ  and  wear  upon  their  faces  the  radiance  of  His 
beauty  ? 

Why  should  there  not  still  be  a  passion  for  Christ, 
so  real,  so  full,  so  life-controlling  that  we  should  count 
all  things  but  dross,  so  that  we  might  win  Him  and 
completely  please  Him?  Nothing  but  such  a  passion 
for  Christ  will  ever  give  men  the  passion  for  souls 
which  they  must  have,  if  the  world  is  to  be  won.  Do 
you  think  we  can  evangelize  the  world  in  this  gener- 
ation except  with  such  a  love  for  the  hearts  of  men,  as 
that  which  made  Jesus  Christ  willing,  though  He  was 
rich,  for  our  sakes  to  become  poor,  made  Him  willing 
to  stoop  from  His  seat  at  God's  right  hand,  even  to 
the  shame  and  the  cruelty  of  Calvary? 

When  Adoniram  Judson  took  up  his  work  among 
the  Karens  in  Burmah  and  saw  the  magnificent  op- 
portunities there,  the  possibilities  beyond  all  words,  and 
felt  how  hampered  he  was,  almost  abandoned  by  the 
American  churches,  he  wrote  back  a  plea  to  them. 
We  may  not  all  frame  our  desires  in  Judson's  words, 
but  we  could  frame  our  lives  in  Judson's  spirit : 

"  May  God  forgive  all  those  who  desert  us  in  our 
extremity.  May  He  save  them  all.  But  surely,  if 
any  sin  will  lie  with  crushing  weight  on  the  trembling, 
shrinking  soul,  when  grim  death  draws  near;  if  any 
sin  will  clothe  the  face  of  the  final  Judge  with  an  angry 
frown,  withering  up  the  last  hope  of  the  condemned, 
in   irremediable   everlasting   despair,   it  is   the   sin   of 


49^       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

turning  a  deaf  ear  to  the  plaintive  cry  of  ten  millions 
of  immortal  beings,  who,  by  their  darkness  and  misery, 
cry,  day  and  night,  '  Come  to  our  rescue,  ye  bright 
sons  and  daughters  of  America,  come  and  save  us, 
for  we  are  sinking  into  hell.'  " 

What  but  the  Spirit  of  God  can  kindle  in  our  hearts  a 
love  for  the  souls  of  men,  such  as  this  or  as  filled  the 
heart  of  St.  Paul  when  he  was  willing  for  his  brethren's 
sake,  to  be  accursed  from  Christ? 

"  Oh  to  save  these !  to  perish  for  their  saving. 
Die  for  their  life,  be  offered  for  them  all !  " 

Why  should  we  not  be  offered  for  them  all?  Men 
are  offered  for  other  things.  Is  it  to  be  expected  as 
the  natural  thing  that,  in  the  building  of  railways  in 
Africa,  human  lives  should  be  laid  down  in  sacrifice 
without  reserve,  but  be  denied  to  Jesus  Christ? 
The  Holy  Spirit  is  the  spirit  of  holiness,  of  whole- 
ness of  devotion.  When  He  controls  the  will  of  those 
whose  life  has  come  wholly  from  Himself  they  will  be 
ready  to  yield  themselves  with  contempt  for  the  cost, 
to  His  ministry  of  world  redemption.  And  they  will 
not  do  it  until  then.  The  missionary  enterprise  waits 
for  the  day  when  the  Holy  Spirit  shall  pervade  and 
dominate  the  Church  of  Christ,  and  the  Holy  Spirit 
waits  for  the  day  when  the  Church  shall  be  willing. 


XLIII 

RESOURCES  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH* 

THE  history  of  the  world  is  in  a  real  sense  just 
the  story  of  the  widening  sovereignty  of  man. 
On  any  theory  of  his  origin,  he  began  quite 
simply ;  the  centuries  have  watched  the  gradual 
but  uninterrupted  expansion  of  his  power.  It  is  as 
though  God  Himself  had  felt  an  increasing  trust  in  man 
and  had  attested  the  increase  of  His  trust  by  increasing 
man's  power,  by  admitting  him,  so  to  speak,  to  a  fel- 
lowship in  the  divine  might  and  authority.  That  may 
seem  a  bold  way  of  putting  it,  but  there  is  a  saying  of 
our  Lord's  which  justifies  it;  and  it  is  evidenced 
enough  by  the  obvious  fact  of  history  that  this  in- 
crease of  power  has  been  in  the  hands  of  the  nations 
which  believe  in  God  and  in  the  Son  of  God,  Jesus 
Christ,  our  Lord. 

I  am  not  concerned,  however,  to  speak  of  the  his- 
torical significance  of  the  immense  resources  of  the 
Christian  nations.  We  are  to  consider  their  prophetic 
significance ;  not  how  it  came  about  that  the  Chris- 
tian powers  possess  these  resources,  but  why  do 
they  possess  them  to-day,  for  what  service  in  the  days 
to  come?  We  are  to  think  of  the  challenge  that  is 
presented  to  the  Christian  Church  by  our  possession 
of  these  vast  resources  calling  us  to  effort  commen- 
surate with  our  powers. 

Let  us  begin  on  the  very  lowest  plane  and  think, 
first  of  all,  of  the  abounding  material  resources  of  the 
Christian  Church.  And  that  we  may  think  accurately 
and  not  too  generally,  I  propose  that  we  confine  our 

*  An  address  at  the  Student  Volunteer  Convention,  in  Tor- 
onto, on  March  i,  1902. 

493 


494       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

thought  to  the  immense  resources  possessed  by  the 
four  countries  which  are  doing  to-day  nine-tenths  of 
the  missionary  work  of  the  world,  and  on  whose 
shoulders  the  chief  burden  for  the  world's  evangeliza- 
tion must  rest.  I  mean  Germany,  Great  Britain, 
Canada  and  the  United  States.  How  can  we  get  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  material  resources  of  these  four 
great  lands? 

It  may  seem  an  odd  way  to  begin,  but  I  suppose  that 
most  people  would  begin  by  asking,  first,  how  much 
these  lands  were  in  de1)t  ?  For,  after  all,  their  indebted- 
ness is  an  indication  of  Iheir  credit ;  and  there  is  per- 
haps no  better  way  to  know  how  they  stand  among  the 
nations  than  to  estimate  the  obligations  that  they  bear. 
The  national  debt  of  these  four  countries  is  $7,000,000,- 
000.  If  all  the  countries  in  the  world  now  contributing 
to  the  missionary  enterprise  should  give  every  day  for 
one  year  what  they  are  now  giving  in  a  year,  they 
would  not  at  the  end  of  that  year  have  given  as  much 
as  the  debts  of  these  four  nations. 

The  annual  exports  of  these  four  countries  are  $4,- 
143,000,000 — nearly  one-half  of  the  exports  of  the 
whole  world.  The  revenues  of  these  four  countries 
amount  to  $1,774,000,000 — more  than  twice  the  rev»- 
enues  of  the  entire  heathen  world.  And  the  bank  de- 
posits in  these  four  coimtries  alone  aggregate  $9,032,- 
000,000,  an  amount  equal  to  three-halves  of  the  rev- 
enues of  the  entire  world  or  to  the  missionary  gifts 
of  the  entire  Protestant  Church  for  more  than  four 
and  a  half  centuries. 

These  resources  can  be  put  a  little  more  strikingly 
still.  In  the  first  eleven  months  of  the  last  year, 
1901,  the  bank  clearings  of  the  United  States  were 
$108,724,000,000.  It  would  take  the  Christian  Church, 
giving  at  the  present  rate,  6,300  years  to  give  as  much 


P_esources  of  the  Christian  Church       495 

money  for  foreign  missions  as  the  bank  clearings  of 
the  United  States  alone  amounted  to  for  the  first  eleven 
months  of  the  last  calendar  year.  On  the  thirtieth 
day  of  April  of  1901  there  were  dealt  in  on  the 
floor  of  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  3,261,226 
shares  of  stock,  representing  a  market  value  of 
about  $200,000,000.  The  stock  transactions  of  that 
one  day  amounted  to  more  than  all  the  contributions 
of  the  Christian  Church  for  the  world's  evangelization 
for  more  than  ten  years.  You  may  say  that 
this  is  simply  dealing  in  paper  or  credits  and 
not  evidence  of  real  wealth.  Well,  the  deposits 
of  the  national  and  savings  banks  of  the  United 
States  last  year  amounted  to  $5,641,000,000 — more 
money  than  these  four  countries  combined  give  to  for- 
eign missions  in  three  hundred  and  twenty  years. 

Let  us  turn  aside  now  for  a  moment  from  this 
method  of  estimating  the  resources  of  these  lands,  and 
think  of  what  these  four  countries  are  spending  on 
war.  They  have  enlisted  in  their  armies  1,148,000 
men.  It  cost  $694,000,000  to  maintain  these  armies 
for  one  year.  More  than  the  Christian  Church  gives 
to  foreign  missions  in  thirty  years  was  buried  last 
year  in  the  maintenance  of  the  armaments  and  the 
armies  of  these  four  coimtrics  alone.  Great  Britain 
has  spent  already  on  the  war  in  South  Africa  $620,- 
000,000;  and  the  United  States  has  spent  during  the 
three  years  of  the  Spanish  and  Philippine  wars  $509,- 
000,000.  These  two  lands  alone  have  spent  in  the  last 
three  years,  in  these  two  wars,  more  than  enough 
money  to  maintain  20,000  missionaries  on  the  foreign 
field  for  more  than  an  entire  generation. 

We  often  speak  of  what  the  Civil  War  cost  the 
United  States.  Nobody  knows  what  it  cost, — hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  lives,  thousands  of  millions  of 


496        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

dollars,  during  the  four  years  that  that  struggle  was 
waged,  not  to  count  the  immense  wealth  that  was 
wiped  out  and  can  never  be  estimated.  The  Northern 
States  alone  spent  on  the  maintenance  of  that  strug- 
gle something  like  four  and  a  half  billions  of  dollars, 
which,  added  to  the  rest  of  the  money  spent  during  the 
last  century  on  the  army  and  navy  and  pensions,  has 
made  the  expenses  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  for  war  alone  during  the  nineteenth  century 
$9,500,000,000.  In  other  words,  the  United  States 
might  have  maintained  during  the  entire  nineteenth 
century  a  staff  of  95,000  missionaries  on  the  field  every 
year  for  what  she  spent  on  her  army,  her  navy  and  her 
pensions  alone. 

Let  us  turn  away  for  a  few  moments  from  figures 
that  no  one  comprehends ;  it  will  ease  our  minds  to 
pick  out  a  few  illustrative  items  of  expenditure.  The 
amount  spent  on  the  Yale-Harvard  foot-ball  game  in 
1900,  according  to  the  estimate  of  the  New  York  Siin, 
was  greater  than  Denmark,  Finland  and  the  Nether- 
lands contributed  in  that  year  for  the  world's  evangeli- 
zation. The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  is  building 
a  great  cathedral  in  New  York.  No  one  can  have 
any  objection  to  their  building  a  cathedral.  The  archi- 
tecture is  not  good,  but  a  cathedral  will  be  a  good  and 
useful  thing,  provided  other  things  are  not  left  undone 
because  of  it.  The  $15,000,000  that  it  is  proposed  to 
invest  in  the  cathedral  would  maintain  one  thousand 
missionaries  on  the  foreign  field  for  fifteen  years  or 
five  hundred  missionaries  on  the  foreign  field  for  the 
thirty  years  that  that  cathedral  will  be  in  building. 
It  cost,  in  the  last  municipal  election  (in  1901)  in  New 
New  York  city,  to  poll  670.000  votes,  just  $1.08  for 
every  vote.  The  Protestant  Church  did  not  manage 
to  give  that  much  per  member  for  the  world's  evangeli- 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       497 

zation  during  the  whole  year.  And  the  municipal  ex- 
penses of  the  city  of  Philadelphia  for  1901  were  fifty 
per  cent  greater  than  the  gifts  of  the  entire  Protestant 
Church  throughout  the  world  to  the  cause  of  foreign 
missions. 

Let  us  come  back  again  to  the  larger  figures.  Will 
you  think  of  one  great  corporation,  like  the  United 
States  Steel  Company,  with  a  capitalization  of  nearly 
$1,500,000,000  and  actual  profits  last  year  six  times 
as  great  as  the  entire  foreign  missionary  offerings  of 
these  four  countries?  The  gross  earnings  of  the  rail- 
roads of  the  United  States  last  year  were  $1,487,000,- 
000  and  the  net  earnings  more  than  $525,000,000. 
There  is  one  life  insurance  company  in  the  United 
States  which  paid  to  its  beneficiaries  last  year 
forty  per  cent  more  than  the  entire  world  gave  to  the 
foreign  missionary  enterprise  during  that  year;  and 
the  income  of  that  one  company  was  three  times  greater 
than  the  income  of  all  the  missionary  treasuries  of  the 
world  combined. 

You  say  that  all  this  is  selfish  money,  money  that 
would  never  be  available  for  great  benevolent  uses. 
Last  year  alone,  $107,000,000  were  given  to  education 
in  the  United  States,  and  two  persons  gave  $61,000,000 
of  that  amount — $30,000,000  by  Mrs.  Stanford  to  the 
university  that  bears  her  son's  name,  and  $31,000,000 
by  Mr.  Carnegie,  not  counting  his  great  gifts  to  the 
Scotch  universities.  Three  times  as  much  was  given 
by  these  two  individuals  for  education  in  one  year  as 
the  entire  Protestant  Church  throughout  the  world 
gave  for  the  fulfillment  in  mission  lands  of  the  last 
passion  and  command  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  us  go  back  once  more  to  the  larger  figin*es.  The 
national  debts  of  the  world  last  vcar  were  $31,000,000,- 
000.     The  wealth  of  the  United   States  might  have 


498       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

paid  these  three  times  over,  while  the  United  States 
and  the  other  countries  of  which  I  have  spoken  have 
wealth  enough,  if  any  such  gigantic  transaction 
were  possible,  to  purchase  almost  the  whole  heathen 
world. 

It  may  be  said  that  I  have  been  speaking  of  the 
money  that  belongs  to  the  great  powers,  and  not  of  the 
money  that  belongs  to  the  Christian  people  in  these 
lands.  Well,  let  us  come  to  that.  The  united  population 
of  these  four  countries  is  178,000,000.  The  communi- 
cant Protestant  Church  membership  is  more  than  30,- 
000,000 — more  than  one-sixth  of  the  population  of  these 
countries.  The  aggregate  estimated  wealth  of  these 
four  lands  is  over  $200,000,000,000.  If  the  Protestant 
communicants  of  these  four  lands  have  only  their  fair 
proportion  of  this  wealth,  they  have  $33,000,000,000 
in  their  possession.  We  have  not  counted  their  chil- 
dren, or  the  great  mass  of  people  in  Germany  and 
Great  Britain  who  are  esteemed  as  Christian  people, 
though  they  are  not  communicant  members  of  the 
church.  It  would  be  perfectly  fair  to  double  these 
figures  in  order  to  arrive  at  a  just  estimate  of  the 
wealth  of  the  Christian  Churches  in  these  lands — $66,- 
000,000,000;  and  the  amount  that  they  gave  to  foreign 
missions  last  year  was  s^tsjs  of  their  wealth  or  assum- 
ing, which  is  under  the  fact,  that  their  annual  in- 
come was  five  per  cent  of  their  wealth,  t?V  of  their  in- 
come. It  can  be  stated  more  exactly  still  for  the  United 
States.  The  population  of  the  United  States  last  year 
was  76,000,000.  The  communicant  membership  of  the 
Protestant  Churches  was  18,900,000,  a  little  more  than 
one-fourth  of  the  population  of  the  country.  The  esti- 
mated wealth  of  the  country  was  $93,000,000,000;  it 
had  increased  every  year  during  the  ten  years  between 
1890  and  1900  at  the  rate  of  $2,900,000,000  a  year.   In 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       499 

other  words,  assuming  that  they  had  only  their  propor- 
tionate share  of  the  wealth,  the  Protestant  Christians 
of  the  United  States  alone  were  worth  last  year  $23,- 
000,000,000,  and  they  added  $725,000,000  to  their 
wealth  last  year.  What  they  gave  to  the  foreign  mis- 
sion cause  was  one-fourth  of  a  tithe  of  a  tithe  of  a  tithe 
of  their  wealth ;  was  one-twelfth  of  a  tithe  not  of  their 
income,  but  of  what  they  saved  out  of  their  income  last 
year.  After  all  expenses  of  life  were  paid,  after  all 
their  luxuries  were  indulged  in,  after  all  their  waste, 
the  Protestant  Christians  of  the  United  States  added 
to  their  wealth  last  year,  $725,000,000.  If  they  had 
given  one-tenth  of  what  they  saved  last  year  out  of 
their  income  they  would  have  multiplied  1,200  per  cent 
what  they  gave  to  foreign  missions.  And  if  we  had 
added  to  that,  last  year,  the  income  of  the  Church  of 
England,  five  and  three-quarter  million  pounds  from 
its  endowments,  and  seven  and  a  half  million  pounds 
from  gifts — $66,000,000  in  all — we  could  have  gath- 
ered from  the  Church  of  England  and  from  the  Protes- 
tant Christians  of  the  United  States,  three  times  the 
amount  necessary  to  provide  a  force  adequate  for 
the  evangelization  of  the  world,  so  far  as  that  task  can 
be  accomplished  in  a  single  year.  The  Christian 
Church  stands  in  the  possession  of  material  resources 
so  great  that  she  would  not  feel  the  expenditure  of 
what  would  be  necessary  for  the  evangelization  of 
the  whole  world. 

Let  us  turn,  in  the  second  place,  to  the  resources  of 
the  Church  in  life.  I  have  said  that  the  population  of 
these  four  lands  is  178,000,000  people;  that  they  had 
enlisted  in  their  armies  1,148,000  men,  one  out  of  every 
150  of  the  population.  I  do  not  say  that  one  out 
of  every  150  of  the  population  ought  to  go  out  to  the 
mission  field ;  but  is  it  excessive  to  suggest  that  if  we 


500       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

can  spare  one  out  of  150  for  our  armies  enlisted  to  kill, 
we  ought  to  be  able  to  spare  one  out  of  a  thousand  for 
the  amiies  enlisted  to  save?  That  would  send  out  a 
missionary  host  of  200,000.  Or,  if  the  Christian 
Church  would  send  out  from  her  ranks  as  large  a  pro- 
portion as  the  proportion  of  the  citizens  enlisted  in  the 
armies  of  these  four  countries,  it  would  supply  a  mis- 
sionary host  more  than  twenty  times  the  size  of  the 
entire  Protestant  missionary  body  now  at  work  in  the 
world.  The  United  States  alone  had  77,000  soldiers  in 
the  Philippines  in  February.  The  number  of  soldiers  of 
Great  Britain  in  South  Africa  on  the  first  of  January 
was  237,000.  The  United  States  was  maintaining  in 
the  Philippines  more  soldiers  than  we  would  need  mis- 
sionaries to  evangelize  the  world,  and  Great  Britain 
was  maintaining  three  times  as  many  in  South  Africa. 

You  say  that  not  all  of  this  proportion  of  the  Chris- 
tian population  would  be  qualified  for  missionary  serv- 
ice. According  to  The  Statesman's  Year  Book,  there 
are  now  in  the  colleges  and  universities  of  these  four 
countries  161,000  students.  About  40,000  of  these 
will  go  out  every  year,  1,200,000  in  a  generation.  One 
per  cent  of  them  would  be  12,000.  About  four  per 
cent  of  the  present  university  population  of  Great 
Britain  is  enlisted  in  the  ranks  of  the  Student  Volunteer 
Union.  Four  per  cent  of  the  university  and  college 
students  in  these  four  countries  would  yield  all 
the  missionaries  necessary  for  the  evangelization  of 
the  world — 48,000  missionaries  within  the  term  of  one 
generation  alone.  The  Christian  Church  has  ample  re- 
sources in  life. 

Let  us  think,  in  the  third  place,  of  the  resources  of 
the  Christian  Church  in  the  matter  of  agency,  instru- 
mentality and  equipment.  Think  of  her  knowledge  of 
the  world !     Where  could  she  not  go  now,  knowing 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       501 

perfectly  the  conditions  that  she  must  confront,  the 
minds  of  the  people  with  whom  she  was  to  deal,  the 
problems  she  was  to  meet?  The  whole  world  has 
swung  within  the  last  hundred  years  under  the  control 
of  Christendom.  Why  was  China  not  partitioned  last 
year?  Because  of  any  power  in  China?  Not  in  the 
least !  Why  does  the  Ottoman  curse  still  rest  on  lands 
where  since  it  first  came  it  has  been  a  barbarian  and 
an  outlaw  ?  Why  does  the  Turk  hold  Constantinople  ? 
Not  because  of  any  virtue  or  power  in  him.  The 
Christian  powers  rule  the  world;  they  go  where  they 
will,  do  what  they  please;  the  whole  world  has  come 
under  the  political  control  of  the  nations  which  can  be 
dominated  by  the  Christian  Church.  It  lies  not  alone 
under  their  political  but  under  their  industrial  control. 
Who  owns  the  immense  fleet  of  shuttles  all  over  this 
world,  weaving  the  fabric  of  its  life  into  a  tighter  web 
each  year?  The  Christian  nations  control  the  world, 
and  they  may  be  controlled  by  the  Christian  influence 
and  Churches  in  them. 

Think  again  of  the  actual  missionary  equipment  of 
the  Church.  There  are  558  missionary  societies,  306 
of  them  in  these  four  countries,  with  7,319  mission 
stations,  14,364  organized  churches,  more  than  i,550'" 
000  converts  in  these  churches ;  with  94  colleges  and 
universities  having  a  student  population  greater  than 
that  of  Germany  and  almost  as  great  as  the  combined 
university  population  of  Canada  and  Great  Britain.  I 
hesitate  to  speak  of  the  immense  mass  of  machinery 
that  has  grown  up  under  the  control  of  Christian  mis- 
sions :  20,458  schools  with  an  attendance  of  children 
larger  than  the  standing  armies  of  these  four  nations ; 
379  hospitals  and  782  dispensaries  treating  every  year 
more  patients  than  the  entire  population  of  the  Domin- 
ion of  Canada ;  152  publishing  houses,  printing  annually 


502       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

nearly  400,000,000  pages  and  circulating  the  I)ible  in 
452  living  versions ;  and  64  missionary  ships  belonging 
exclusively  to  Christ,  traversing  every  sea  and  almost 
furnishing  Christian  missions,  if  other  ships  were  lack- 
ing, with  the  means  of  bearing  the  representatives  of 
the  cross  to  every  land  under  the  sky. 

I  have  spoken  of  these  things  to  get  rid  of  them, 
not  that  I  have  any  great  interest  in  them  at  all ;  for 
I  have  but  the  slightest  interest  in  the  money  of  the 
Christian  Church,  or  the  number  of  her  men,  or  her 
immense  machinery.  I  mention  them  to  be  rid  of  them 
once  for  all.  If  forced  to  choose  I  would  rather  stand 
on  the  side  of  one  truth  than  have  all  these  other  re- 
sources at  my  back.  What  are  all  these  things,  the 
money,  the  men,  the  machinery,  in  comparison  with  the 
moral  resources  that  are  now  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Christian  Church?  (i)  I  mean  for  one  thing  that 
vision  of  right  and  duty  which  the  Christian  Church 
alone  possesses.  (2)  I  mean  for  another  thing  that 
sense  of  shame  at  seeing  the  right  and  not  doing  it, 
which  the  Christian  religion  alone  fosters.  Did  it 
never  strike  you  as  significant  that  no  other  religion 
than  that  of  Christ  has  ever  bred  an  abhorrence  of 
hypocrisy?  Why?  It  is  the  only  religion  which  pos- 
sesses the  moral  power  that  can  shame  the  heart  of  the 
man  who  dreams  but  does  not  do. 

(3)  I  mean  the  stimulus,  too,  of  splendid  difficulty. 
It  is  the  richest  thing  about  this  missionary  enterprise 
that  it  is  not  an  easy  enterprise.  I  count  it  among  the 
finest  moral  resources  of  the  Christian  Church  that 
this  task  is  one  of  enormous  and  stupendous  difficulty. 
Why  does  a  man's  heart  go  out  toward  the  problem  of 
the  evangelization  of  Islam,  except  because  that  is  the 
hardest  missionary  problem  in  the  world  ?  The  Roman 
Catholic  Church  is  afraid  of  nothing — misery,  disease, 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       503 

loneliness,  martyrdom; — but  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  since  the  days  of  Raymond  Lull  has  been  afraid 
of  Islam.  The  duty  of  evangelizing  Islam  is  laid  upon 
the  shoulders  of  Protestant  men  and  women,  because 
it  is  the  hardest  work  laid  out  for  men  to  do,  I  go 
back  again  and  again  to  that  line  in  the  last  chapter 
of  Paul's  First  Corinthian  Epistle :  "  I  will  tarry  at 
Ephesus  until  Pentecost.  For  a  great  door  and  ef- 
fectual is  opened  unto  me,  and  there  are  many  adver- 
saries." No  but  for  Paul ;  adversaries  constituted  his 
opportunity.  They  did  not  qualify  it.  The  most  splen- 
did moral  resource  of  the  Christian  Church  is  the  diffi- 
culty of  its  undertaking.  It  is  not  what  man  does  that 
exalts  him ;  it  is  the  great  thing  that  he  zvill  do. 

(4)  Think,  in  the  fourth  place,  of  the  moral  resource 
found  in  the  singular  and  solitary  adaptation  of  Chris- 
tianity to  meet  the  absolutely  irrepressible  needs  of  life. 
No  other  religion  can  provide  the  moral  sanctions  with 
which  civilization  can  live,  except  Christianity.  (5) 
Think  also  of  the  immense  moral  power  possessed  by 
the  Church  in  the  unprofessional  missionary  body. 
Our  political  influence  is  spread  over  the  world  to-day. 
What  might  not  be  accomplished  if  that  influence  were 
exerted  all  over  this  world  by  Christian  men,  if  every 
man  who  went  out  from  these  lands,  in  government 
service  or  in  commercial  employ,  went  out  as  John 
Lawrence  went,  as  Herbert  Edwardes  went,  as  "  Chi- 
nese "  Gordon  went,  as  hundreds  of  others  have  gone, 
who  by  their  passion  for  truthfulness,  by  unsullied 
purity,  by  Christ-like  unselfishness,  commended  wher- 
ever they  went  the  Lord  Christ  to  the  hearts  of  men. 

(6)  Think  of  the  immense  power  that  resides  in 
ideas  themselves !  We  have  never  yet  measured  the 
full  moral  [lower  that  resides  in  a  great  true  idea.  No 
man  can  stay  it.     We  have  seen  during  the  last  forty 


504       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

years  a  movement  in  Japan  testifying  to  this  power  of 
ideas  to  work  out  such  a  transformation  in  the  very 
character  of  a  nation,  as  is  Hkely  to  force  us  to  restate 
all  our  conceptions  of  ethnic  psychology.  Nobody 
knows  the  power  resident  in  a  great  idea.  I  believe 
that  we  need  more  and  more  to  emphasize  the  fact 
that  the  missionary  enterprise  is  the  supreme  enter- 
prise of  moral  glory  and  power  in  the  world.  There 
is  no  other  enterprise  that  can  compare  with  it,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  its  moral  power  alone. 

I  have  mentioned  that,  too,  to  pass  it  by ;  and  I  come 
to  speak,  last  of  all,  of  the  spiritual  resources  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Let  money  and  men  and  methods 
and  machinery  fade  out  of  our  vision.  Let  even  the 
splendid  moral  power  and  resources  of  the  Christian 
Church  escape  our  thought ;  and  let  us  turn  lastly 
to  think  of  the  indescribable  spiritual  resources  of  the 
Church. 

( I )  First  of  all,  God  is  with  us.  I  do  not  mean  this 
only  in  the  ordinary  sense  that  God  goes  with  the 
men  who  go  with  the  gospel.  Of  course  that  is  true, 
but  I  mean  it  in  a  greater  sense  than  that, — that  be- 
yond the  reach  of  our  furthest  effort  God  is  at  work. 
God  is  at  work  in  this  world,  and  all  history  is  only 
the  orderly  unfolding  of  his  perfect  and  irresistible 
will.  I  confess  that  it  is  hard  at  times  to  put  things 
together  and  make  all  this  clear  to  one's  mind.  I  do 
not  understand  why  the  Tai-ping  rebellion  should  have 
failed.  I  do  not  understand  what  the  will  of  God  meant 
when  it  allowed  the  splendid  opportunity  that  that  re- 
bellion presented  to  the  Christian  Church  to  pass  away. 
There  are  some  older  people  who  will  recall  those 
days  when  that  great  rebellion  swept  up  from  Kwang- 
tung  to  the  Yangtsze  valley  and  down  the  valley  to  the 
sea  and  obliterated  every  vestige  of  idolatry,  so  that  the 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       505 

idols  came  down  off  their  pedestals,  and  the  waters 
of  the  rivers  ran  full  of  the  bodies  of  Chinese  gods 
down  to  the  Yellow  Sea.  The  Christian  Church  might 
have  gone  in  and  built  a  house  of  Christian  worship 
on  the  ruins  of  every  dismantled  temple  and  set  up  a 
Christian  preacher  on  the  pedestal  of  every  discredited 
god.  It  seemed  as  though  the  very  sun  in  the  heavens 
stood  still  to  give  the  Church  her  opportunity.  But 
it  passed  at  last.  The  temples  rose  again  upon  their 
ruins,  and  the  idols  came  back  to  their  pedestals  and 
leered  down  again  upon  the  faces  of  their  worshipers. 
Why?  And  I  do  not  understand  why  the  Lord  al- 
lowed the  Boxer  uprising  to  sweep  hundreds  of 
missionaries  and  thousands  of  Chinese  Christians  off 
Chinese  soil.  But  I  know  that  back  of  all  these  things 
the  living  God  is  ordering  His  world,  and  that  in  this 
attempt  to  evangelize  the  world  we  are  not  setting 
out  on  any  mad  human  enterprise,  but  we  are 
simply  feeding  our  life  into  the  great  sweep  of  the 
orderly  purposes  of  God.    God  is  with  us. 

(2)  I  mention,  in  the  second  place,  the  spiritual  re- 
source of  prayer.  "  If  ye  shall  ask  anything  in  my 
name,"  said  Christ,  "  I  will  do  it.  All  things  whatso- 
ever ye  shall  ask  in  prayer,  believing,  ye  shall  receive." 
"  If  ye  have  faith  .  .  .  if  ye  shall  say  unto  this 
mountain.  Be  thou  removed  ...  it  shall  be 
done."  Do  we  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  was  dealing 
sincerely  by  us  when  he  spoke  these  words?  or  were 
these  the  lies  of  a  deceiving  man?  How  many 
of  us  are  there  who  place  our  confidence  in  Christ 
and  in  the  words  of  Christ  about  prayer?  I  sup- 
pose there  are  many  of  us  who  find  no  place  for 
faith  in  it  in  our  lives.  We  call  it  illogical.  But  Mr. 
Huxley  would  not  go  so  far.  "  Not  that  I  mean  for  a 
moment  to  say,"  he  wrote  in  one  of  his  strange  letters 


5o6        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

to  Charles  Kint^sloy,  "  that  prayer  is  illogical.  For  if 
the  universe  is  ruled  by  fixed  laws,  it  would  be  just  as 
illogical  for  me  to  ask  you  to  answer  this  letter  as  to 
ask  the  Almighty  to  alter  the  weather."  It  is  not 
prayer  that  is  illogical,  it  is  not  prayer  that  is  disrup- 
tive, it  is  not  prayer  that  cuts  across  the  orderly  work- 
ings of  the  forces  of  God.  It  is  the  want  of  prayer 
that  is  disruptive  and  that  distorts  the  plans  of  God. 
Years  and  years  ago,  when  He  outlined  the  develop- 
ment of  human  history.  He  arranged  the  place  that 
the  force  of  prayer  should  play  in  it.  It  is  not  the 
exercise  of  that  force  that  now  conflicts  with  His  will ; 
it  is  the  failure  of  that  force  to  do  its  work  that  inter- 
rupts the  orderly  workings  of  the  plans  of  God  and  that 
fractures  His  plan  here  in  the  world.  I  believe  in 
prayer  as  the  great  force  in  life.  I  believe  in  prayer 
itself  as  a  life.  I  believe  in  prayer  as  a  passion,  as 
an  entreaty,  as  the  utter  longing  and  engulfing  of  the 
will  in  great  achievement.  We  have  with  God  and  of 
God  the  power  of  prayer. 

(3)  Thirdly,  we  have  the  power  of  sacrifice.  It  has 
been  proposed  now  and  then  that  we  should  seek  in 
our  missionary  boards  for  a  financial  endowment.  I 
would  rather  have  the  endowment  of  the  memory  of 
one  martyr  than  an  endowment  of  much  money. 
There  is  no  endowment  so  great  as  the  endowment  of 
the  memory  of  sacrifice.  It  may  be  only  imaginary, 
but  again  and  again  during  the  days  of  this  conference 
there  have  risen  up  before  my  thought  those  faces 
that  we  have  loved  long  since  and  lost  awhile ;  those 
whom  in  the  years  past  we  saw  here  in  these  conven- 
tions, and  who  have  gone  now  through  sacrifice  and 
suffering  and  the  martyr's  death,  to  the  better  service 
in  the  land  where  the  servants  of  the  King  look  upon 
the  King's  face  as  they  serve  Him.    Again  and  again 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       507 

Pitkin's  face  has  come  back  to  my  memory,  and  the 
faces  of  the  Httle  children  of  other  volunteers  whom  I 
knew  in  the  earlier  years  of  this  Movement  and  who 
have  passed  away  in  the  great  floodtide  of  sacri- 
fice and  of  loss  in  China.  I  think  of  Simcox 
and  his  little  children.  The  last  sight  that  the 
Chinese  said  they  saw  as  they  watched  the  burn- 
ing residences  just  beyond  the  north  gates  of  the 
city  was  Mr.  Simcox  walking  up  and  down  back  of  the 
flames,  holding  his  two  children  by  the  hand.  I 
think  of  that  old  man  who  came  back,  when  he  might 
have  escaped,  to  confess  his  faith  in  Christ  and  die 
a  martyr  before  his  own  dwelling,  and  of  that  old 
woman  in  one  of  the  missions  in  Shan-tung  who,  con- 
fessing Jesus  Christ,  was  ordered  by  the  magistrate  to 
be  beaten  again  and  again  upon  her  lips,  and  who  still 
persisted  with  mangled  and  bleeding  lips  to  murmur 
her  faith  in  Jesus.  I  tliink  this  Movement  will  be  a 
different  Movement  forever  because  of  the  memory 
of  its  martyrs  and  of  other  martyrs  who  died  with 
them,  of  those  who  through  peril,  toil  and  pain  climbed 
that  steep  ascent  of  heaven.  I  am  sure  that  as  their 
memory  lives  with  us,  the  grace  of  God  will  indeed 
be  given  to  us  to  follow  in  their  train.  And,  everything 
else  aside,  the  spiritual  power  that  resides  in  such 
glorious  sacrifice  is  enough  to  call  us  out  to  complete 
the  work  which  these  began  and  which  is  surer  of  suc- 
cess because  they  have  died. 

(4)  Last  of  all,  we  have  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  I  wish  there  were  some  new  phraseology  that 
would  enable  one  to  speak  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  such 
a  way  that  it  might  bite  through  all  our  conventional 
conceptions  of  Him  and  lay  hold  on  the  very  depths 
and  sanctities  of  our  life.  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost 
as  the  spiritual  resource  of  this  missionary  movement. 


5o8       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

enabling  each  one  of  us  to  be  what  without  His  help 
we  can  never  be.  I  wrote  to  one  of  our  missionaries  a 
few  weeks  ago,  in  response  to  an  earnest  appeal  for 
more  reinforcements,  that  we  could  not  possibly  send 
Ihcm;  the  Volunteer  Movement  did  its  best,  but  it 
did  not  produce  enough  men  and  women  to  fill  these 
phiccs ;  that  instead  of  quadrupling  our  numbers  we 
shmild  just  have  to  quadruple  ourselves  and  allow  in 
some  way  that  Spirit  of  God,  who  has  never  been  al- 
lowed to  show  what  He  can  accomplish  with  a  human 
life,  to  do  with  some  of  us  what  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago  He  was  able  to  do  in  the  Roman  Empire  with  the 
Apostle  Paul.  I  believe  we  have  not  begun  as  yet 
to  test  the  power  of  that  Divine  Spirit  who  can  take 
even  very  unpromising  men  and  women  and  give  them 
a  power  beyond  the  power  of  man. 

(5)  I  do  not  minimize  all  those  supernaturalisms, 
those  mystical  dealings  of  the  Holy  Spirit  with  our 
life  by  which  he  lodges  the  power  of  God  in  this 
Movement  and  in  all  the  work  of  man  for  Him ;  but 
if  you  ask  how,  in  one  word.  He  is  to  fulfil  and  realize 
this  supernatural  power  in  us,  I  ansv;er,  by  the  exalta- 
tion in  every  life  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  assignment 
to  Him  of  the  preeminent,  of  the  sovereign  place, 
"  When  He,  the  spirit  of  truth,  is  come,"  said  Jesus, 
"  He  shall  not  speak  of  Himself,  He  shall  glorify  Me, 
for  He  shall  take  of  Mine,  and  shall  declare  it  unto 
you."  By  those  secrets  which  are  His  alone,  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  able  to  plant  in  each  human  life  the  loving 
and  the  supernatural  Christ.  After  all  He  is  the  great 
resource,  the  great  resource  because  He  is  the  desire 
of  all  the  nations  in  whom  alone  their  life  is ;  the  great 
resource  because  in  Him  is  all  fulness  of  power  and  all 
treasure  of  knowledge  and  wisdom  for  us;  the  great 
resource  because  it  was  His  lips  that  said,  "  All  au- 


Resources  of  the  Christian  Church       509 

thority  hath  been  given  unto  Me,  go  ye  therefore ; " 
the  great  resource  because  without  Him  we  can  do 
nothing  and  in  Him  we  can  do  all  things.  In  Jesus 
Christ  there  is  equipment  enough, — barring  all  finan- 
cial resources  and  all  available  life, — equipment  enough 
to  enable  a  very  little  band  to  go  out  and,  sooner  or 
later,  to  evangelize  this  whole  world. 

And  there  is  in  Jesus  Christ  not  alone  equipment 
enough  for  this,  but  there  is  in  Him  also  power  to 
rouse  us  to  accept  this  equipment  for  ourselves.  You 
say  the  Church  is  dead  and  asleep  and  cannot  be 
wakened  to  any  such  great  mission  as  this?  Well,  the 
lines  were  spoken  of  another  land  and  of  another  name, 
but  they  apply  as  well  to  this : 

"  I  know  of  a  land  that  is  sunk  in  shame, 
Of  hearts  that  faint  and  tire; 

And  I  know  of  a  name,  a  name,  a  name, 
Can  set  this  land  on  fire. 

Its  sound  is  a  brand,  its  letters  flame; 

I  know  of  a  name,  a  name,  a  name. 
Will  set  this  land  on  fire." 
If  that  name  is  allowed  to  stand  out  above  every  other 
name,  if  that  voice  is  allowed  to  sound  above  every 
other  voice  and  that  hand  to  clasp  closer  than  any 
other  hand,  nothing  is  impossible.  Would  that  all 
vision  of  money  and  of  men  and  of  method  and 
of  machinery  and  of  moral  power  and  of  martyr- 
dom, might  die  out  of  our  thought,  while  we  fix  our 
gaze  for  the  last  thing  upon  Him  and  hear  His  voice 
alone :  "  I  am  the  Son  of  God.  I  am  going  forth  to 
My  war.  I  am  the  leader  that  has  never  lost.  My 
battle  is  to  last  till  all  the  lost  are  found  and  all  the 
bound  are  free.  Who  will  come  after  Me  ?  "  Would 
that  we  might  rise  up  in  the  power  that  He  can  give, 
in  answer  to  His  appeal  and  go  after  Him  ? 


XLIV 

THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WORLD  IN  THIS 
GENERATION 

THIS  is  the  watchword  of  the  Student  Vokin- 
teer  Movement  for  Foreign  Missions,  It  is  a 
fitting  thing  that  such  a  Movement  should 
have  a  watchword,  to  serve  partly  as  a  defini- 
tion of  its  common  purpose  and  partly  as  a  rallying 
cry  under  which,  forgetting  all  differences,  its  members 
can  agree  and  advance  as  those  bound  together  by  one 
common  aim. 

A  glance  backward  over  history  will  sufiice  to  show 
the  value  and  the  utility  of  such  watchwords.  Cato, 
closing  every  speech,  no  matter  what  the  subject  of 
it,  with  the  words :  "  Carthage  must  be  destroyed ;" 
Pope  Urban  in  the  market  place  of  Clermont  giving  to 
the  crusades  their  watchcry,  "  Deus  vult,"  or  the  his- 
tory of  Japan,  since  the  days  of  Commodore  Perry's 
visit,  unfolding  itself  around  the  idea  of  "  Foreign  in- 
tercourse," and  all  Chinese  history  focusing  in  the 
opposite  cry,  "  The  expulsion  of  the  barbarians,"  the 
great  phrases  of  our  own  history,  beginning  with  "  No 
taxation  without  representation,"  later,  "  Fifty-four, 
forty  or  fight,"  and  in  our  own  day  on  the  part  of  one 
political  party,  a  well-known  formula  on  the  currency 
question — are  all  of  them  illustrations  of  the  value  and 
utility  of  watchwords  as  gathering  up  into  themselves 
the  common  passions,  the  common  convictions,  the 
common  aspirations  of  large  bodies  of  men.  And  such 
a  Movement  as  this  Movement  of  students,  worthier 
than  any  of  these,  aiming  at  a  purpose  far  higher  than 
any  of  these  ever  dreamed  of,  inspired  by  the  Spirit  of 

510 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        5 1 1 

the  Son  of  Man  and  the  Son  of  God,  surely  docs  well 
to  choose  for  itself  a  watchword  also. 

There  are  four  different  marks  that  should  char- 
acterize a  religious  watchword.  It  should  be  short ; 
it  should  be  striking ;  it  should  be  Scriptural ;  it  should 
propose  something  heroic.  This  watchword  meets  all 
these  requirements. 

It  is  short — "  The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in 
This  Generation."  It  has  even  been  proposed  by  some 
that  it  should  be  shortened  yet  more  by  dropping  the 
three  central  words  and  saying  "  The  Evangelization 
of  This  Generation,"  or  by  dropping  the  last  three 
words  and  saying  only  "  The  Evangelization  of  the 
World."  To  many  either  of  these  two  shorter  forms 
would  mean  precisely  what  the  watchword  means  now. 
But  there  are  great  multitudes  to  whom  the  dropping 
of  the  last  three  words  would  mean  the  elision  of  the 
idea  of  urgency,  while  there  are  others  to  whom  the 
elision  of  the  central  three  words  would  mean  the 
dropping  of  the  idea  of  universality ;  and  such  a  watch- 
word must  be  unmistakably  both  a  universal  and  an 
urgent  cry. 

This  watchword  is  striking,  also.  It  might  have 
stated  simply  that  the  aim  was  to  preach  the  gospel 
to  every  creature,  or  some  such  phrase  might  have  been 
chosen  as  "  World-wide  Victory,"  as  some  have  pro- 
posed. But  this  latter  is  flat,  inappropriate,  and  of 
doubtful  meaning,  and  the  first  eighteen  centuries 
have  shown  that  even  though  those  words  were 
uttered  by  the  lips  of  the  Son  of  God  Himself, 
they  have  lost  their  power  of  striking  appeal  to  the 
hearts  of  His  disciples.  A  watchword  has  been  chosen 
that,  conforming  to  our  Lord's  last  command,  yet  by 
its  form  challenges  the  thought  and  the  scrutiny  of 
men. 


^12        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

And,  again,  this  watchword  is  Scriptural ;  it  is  the 
word  which  the  evangelists  themselves  used  as  de- 
scribing the  work  of  our  Saviour,  who  went  about 
preaching  the  glad  tidings  of  the  kingdom.  The 
evangelization  of  the  world — Jesus  Himself  said,  "  Dis- 
ciple all  nations,"  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world,"  "  Wit- 
ness unto  Me,  even  unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth."  In  this  generation — "  Every  creature,"  said 
Jesus  Christ. 

And  once  again,  this  watchword  proposes  some- 
thing heroic.  We  want  no  low  and  squalid  appeals 
made  to  us.  We  desire  that  whatever  is  set  for  us 
to  do  shall  tax  sacrifice  and  heroism  to  the  uttermost. 
We  wish  no  man  to  summon  us  to  any  poor,  paltry, 
meagre  human  enterprise.  We  wish  a  task  that  shall 
be  inadequate  for  man  in  his  own  spirit ;  a  task  that 
shall  be  too  great  for  any  to  perform  save  those  who 
take  it  up  clothed  with  the  Spirit  of  the  Most  High. 

So  I  say  this  watchword  is  all  of  these — short,  strik- 
ing, Scriptural  and  heroic. 

And  yet  ever  since  this  watchword  was  adopted 
it  has  met  with  objections.  There  have  been  some  to 
cavil  at  it,  because  they  said  it  proposed  an  impossi- 
bility; while  there  have  been  others  who  have  ob- 
jected to  it  because  they  have  read  into  it  objection- 
able meanings  to  which  they  were  not  prepared  to  give 
their  assent.  I  suppose  there  is  no  one  who  has  stated 
more  cogently  and  more  severely  the  objections  that 
are  urged  against  it  than  Lawrence  in  the  first  edition 
of  his  book  Modern  Missions  in  the  East.  First,  he 
said,  it  ignores  the  difificnltics  in  the  way  of  the  proper 
execution  of  the  last  command  of  Christ.  It  does  not 
take  into  account  the  tremendous  obstacles  that  are  to 
be  overcome  in  presenting  the  gospel  so  that  it  will 
be   understood.     Second,   he   said,   it  ignores   the  re- 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World       513 

sponsibility  which  we  share  with  God  for  the  results 
of  our  labour  in  the  conversion  of-  souls.  Third,  he 
stated,  it  ignores  the  aim  of  Christianizing  the  world 
as  well  as  evangelizing  it,  and  the  fact  that  this  can 
best  and  most  quickly  be  accomplished  by  the  establish- 
ment in  each  land  of  Christian  institutions  and  the 
raising  up  of  a  native  ministry.  And  fourth,  he  said, 
it  stands  in  the  service  of  certain  pre-millennial  notions 
with  which  it  is  consistent  while  with  other  notions  it 
is  not  consistent. 

Now  to  charge  these  things  against  this  watchword 
is  wrong.  This  watchword  does  not,  in  the  first  place, 
propose  any  superficial  preaching  of  the  gospel  to  the 
world.  The  word  that  is  used,  signifying  the  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel,  is  a  stronger  word  than  our  Lord 
Himself  used  when  He  uttered  the  commission  in  the 
forms  in  which  it  is  reported  in  the  47th  verse  of  the 
24th  chapter  of  Luke  and  the  15th  verse  of  the  i6th 
chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  Mark.  The  word  that  has 
been  chosen  proposes  a  more  patient,  reiterated  and 
detailed  proclamation  of  the  truth  than  the  Greek 
word  Christ  Himself  used  in  those  two  chapters  to 
which  I  have  referred.  Immense  difficulties  confront 
this  task.  There  are  millions  among  whom  the  face  of  a 
white  man  has  never  been  seen.  We  know  full  well  the 
distortions  of  mind,  the  inherited  prejudice  and  in- 
capacities, the  ignorance  and  superstition  of  the  non- 
Christian  peoples.  I  think  we  understand  in  some 
measure  the  difficulties  that  the  missionaries  face  in 
barely  making  their  gospel  understood.  This  watch- 
word proposes  the  exhaustion  of  all  that  Jesus  Christ 
meant  when  He  said  this  gospel  was  to  be  preached 
to  every  creature.  If  some  creatures  cannot  take  it  in, 
we  shall  at  least  do  all  of  our  part. 

Neither  is  the  watchword  synonymous  with  the  idea 


514       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

of  the  Christianization  of  the  world  in  this  generation. 
That  is  an  indefinite  idea.  Some  tell  us  that  the  United 
States  is  Christianized,  that  Great  Britain  is  Christian- 
ized, and  that  the  idea  conveyed  by  this  watchword  is 
the  Christianization  of  the  world.  If  they  mean  that 
we  are  to  do  for  the  world  what  has  been  done  for  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,  I  hope  that  much  more 
is  proposed.  We  shall  not  be  satisfied  if  we  produce 
in  China  such  a  condition  of  life  that  from  every 
60,000,000  of  its  people  every  year  100,000  drunkards 
go  down  from  drunkards'  hovels  to  drunkards'  hells. 
We  shall  not  be  satisfied  if  we  introduce  into  any  non- 
Christian  land  such  a  condition  as  that  there  shall  be 
saloons  enough  to  reach  in  an  unbroken  line,  forty  feet 
front  to  each,  from  New  York  to  Chicago.  We  want 
no  such  Christianization.  We  hope  for  something  far 
better,  far  more  salutary,  far  more  beneficial,  far  more 
Christian  than  this  as  the  ultimate  result  of  the  world's 
evangelization.  But  we  do  not  look  for  it  in  a  gen- 
eration. And  if  they  mean  that  every  individual  in 
the  world  is  to  be  lifted  up  into  a  life  of  high  virtue 
and  moral  character,  I  remind  them  of  what  Captain 
Mahan  said  not  long  ago,  when  he  pointed  out  in  a 
magazine  article  that  all  that  is  good  in  our  civilization 
flows  from  the  outstretched  arms  of  the  Crucified ; 
that  if  the  world  is  to  be  brought  up  to  the  moral  plat- 
form on  which  we  stand,  it  is  to  be  done,  not  by  a 
process  of  education,  but  by  a  process  of  conversion. 
And  no  process  of  world-wide  conversion  is  possible 
save  as  it  has  been  preceded  by  a  process  of  world- 
wide evangelization.  But  we  do  not  look  for  world- 
wide conversion  in  a  generation  nor  is  it  proposed  to 
Christianize  the  world  in  this  generation. 

This  motto  is  not  synonymous  with  the  conversion 
of  the  world  in  this  generation.    These  young  men  and 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        515 

women  believe  with  all  their  hearts  that  there  will 
come  a  day  when  from  the  North  to  the  South,  from 
the  rivers  even  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  Jesus  Christ 
Himself  shall  be  King  in  a  sense  more  real  than  any 
man  has  proposed,  when  every  knee  shall  bow  and 
every  tongue  shall  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord, 
to  the  glory  of  God,  the  Father.  We  believe  that 
even  now 

"  The  hands  upon  that  cruel  tree, 
Extended  wide  as  mercy's  span, 
Are  gathering  to  the  Son  of  Man 
The  ages  past  and  yet  to  be." 

And  we  do  believe  with  all  our  hearts  that  no  one  is 
qualified  to  enter  the  mission  field  unless  he  has  learned 
to  share  with  God  the  responsibility  attaching  to  us  for 
the  actual  results  of  our  work  in  the  direct  conversion 
of  souls.  We  believe  with  all  our  hearts  in  expecting 
results,  in  going  out  over  all  this  world  with  the 
gospel,  and  never  resting  until  that  gospel  has  borne 
its  fruits  in  transformed  and  regenerated  lives.  But 
no  one  of  us  ever  converted  a  single  soul  here  in  the 
United  States,  and  we  never  shall  be  able  to  convert 
a  single  soul  in  any  non-Christian  land.  We  are  will- 
ing to  leave  the  results  of  our  work  with  the  sovereign 
will  of  our  God  and  the  sovereign  spirits  of  our  fellow- 
men.  But  we  do  know  that  upon  our  shoulders  is 
laid  the  responsibility  of  offering  to  all  our  fellow- 
men,  in  obedience  to  the  command  of  our  loving  God, 
the  gospel  of  the  grace  of  the  Son  of  Man. 

I  think  the  difficulties  in  this  matter  arise  from 
this  confusion  of  thought.  What  is  proposed  is  not  a 
method ;  it  is  a  purpose.  No  onslaught  is  made  upon 
present  missionary  methods.  It  is  not  proposed  to 
make  any   different  use  in  the   future  of  any  large 


5i6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

increase  tliat  may  come  in  the  mission  force. 
We  believe  in  the  solidity  of  the  methods  of  mis- 
sionary work  now  in  force  on  the  mission  fields. 
If  we  were  in  the  places  of  the  missionaries  we  would 
do  precisely  as  they  have  done.  We  would  gather 
ourselves  in  strong  centres  and  devote  ourselves  to 
the  establishing  of  Christian  institutions  and  the  train- 
ing of  a  native  ministry.  All  wise  friends  of  missions 
believe  in  these  forms  of  work,  in  laying  solid  foun- 
dations and  looking  forward  to  a  long,  heavy  cam- 
paign ;  most  of  all  in  our  supreme  duty  to  build 
up  living,  self-sustaining,  self-propagating  native 
churches.  Scores  of  these  Student  Volunteers  are  look- 
ing forward  to  medical  missionary  effort,  other  scores 
to  educational  work.  They  are  students  training  them- 
selves for  the  most  permanent  and  enduring  work. 
They  are  not  burning  the  bridges  behind  them  and 
pushing  forth  raw  and  ignorant  into  the  mission  fields. 
What  is  proposed  is  no  revolution  of  missionary  policy 
or  missionary  organization.  This  Movement  is  only 
sounding  a  rally  back  to  the  cross  and  the  last  com- 
mand. It  only  stands  before  the  Church  of  Christ 
and  challenges  her  to  believe  that  her  duty  will 
not  have  been  done — no,  will  scarcely  have  been 
begun — until  she  shall  have  raised  up  in  this 
world  an  army  of  missionaries  and  native  Chris- 
tians large  enough  to  secure  the  preaching  of  the  glad 
tidings  of  Christ's  life  and  death  and  blood  to  every 
creature  in  the  world  before  they  die. 

And  as  for  the  objection  that  this  Movement  stands 
in  the  service  of  certain  notions  of  cschatology,  I  have 
only  to  say  that  those  who  have  surrendered  it  to 
those  who  had  such  notions  did  what  they  had  no 
authority  to  do.  V>y  what  privilege  does  any  one  turn 
over  the  right  and  the  dulv  of  the  evangelization  of 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        517 

the  world  to  those  whose  notions  of  eschatology  differ 
from  his?  I  am  looking  for  the  coming  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  for  I  remember  the  words 
which  He  spoke :  "  Watch  ye,  therefore,  for  ye  know 
not  when  the  lord  of  the  house  cometh,  at  even,  or 
at  midnight,  or  at  the  cock-crowing,  or  in  the  morn- 
ing :  lest  coming  suddenly  he  find  you  sleeping.  And 
what  I  say  unto  you,  I  say  unto  all,  watch." 

"  So  I  am  watching  quietly. 

Every  day. 
Whenever  the  sun  shines  brightly, 

I  rise  and  say : 
*  Surely,  it  is  the  shining  of  His  face ! ' 
And  look  unto  the  gates  of  His  high  place 

Beyond  the  sea; 
For  I  know  He  is  coming  shortly 

To  summon  me." 

And  daily  I  pray  that  I  may  so  abide  in  Him  that 
when  He  who  is  my  life  shall  appear,  I  may  have 
confidence  and  not  be  ashamed  before  Him  at  His 
coming.  And  I  think  I  get  from  my  convictions  as 
to  His  second  advent  new  strength  and  fresh  motive. 
But  I  am  not  willing  to  acknowledge  that  any  man 
who  does  not  look  with  me  for  the  coming  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  absolved  thereby  from  the  same  share,  which 
I  think  rests  upon  me,  of  responsibility  for  the  evangel- 
ization of  the  world.  And  I  never  yet  saw  a  Christian 
man  or  woman  anywhere  who  did  not  believe  that  this 
work  of  evangelizing  the  world  relates  itself  in  some 
way  to  the  second  advent  of  our  Lord.  Do  not  our 
standards  and  confessions  of  faith  recognize  that,  in 
whatever  way,  this  work  that  we  are  doing  is  to  issue 
at  last  in  the  glory  of  the  reappearing  of  the  Son  of 
Man?     And   I   see  nothing  to  be   afraid   of  in   the 


51 8        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

fact  that  what  we  arc  doing  will  hasten  the 
coming-  of  Christ,  or  in  this  relationship  of  our 
Lord's  return  to  the  work  of  missions,  when  the 
bishops  of  the  Church  of  England,  in  one  of 
the  last  Lambeth  Conferences,  did  not  hesitate  to 
send  out  these  words  in  their  encyclical :  "  The  cause 
of  missions  is  the  cause  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  May 
this  be  our  aim,  as  it  it  will  be  our  highest  glory,  to 
be  humble  instruments  in  carrying  out  the  loving  will 
of  our  Heavenly  Father  in  lowliness  of  mind,  pray- 
ing for  the  Divine  blessing  and  confident  in  the  Divine 
promises,  ministering  the  gospel  of  the  grace  of  God 
to  the  souls  that  we  love,  and  thus  in  promoting  the 
Kingdom  of  truth  and  righteousness  fulfil  the  sacred 
mission  of  the  Church  of  God  by  preparing  the  world 
for  the  second  advent  of  our  Lord."  What  if  it  should 
be  true  that  there  should  be  some  who  hold  distorted 
notions  of  eschatology,  who  still  desire  to  share  with 
us  in  the  evangelization  of  the  world?  Shall  we  bid 
them  to  stand  off  because  they  follow  not  with  us? 
Or  suppose  it  to  be  true  that  there  are  men  who  hold 
distorted  notions  of  what  the  evangelization  of  the 
world  means,  what  then?  Because  Universalists  hold 
distorted  notions  of  the  truth  of  the  love  of  God,  be- 
cause fatalists  hold  distorted  notions  of  the  truth  of  the 
will  of  God,  shall  we  therefore  surrender  our  belief 
in  the  love  and  the  will  of  God  ?  I  do  not  know  what 
will  come  after  this  world  has  been  evangelized.  I 
do  not  know  whether  our  work  will  be  done  then  or 
not.  I  do  not  think  it  will.  But  I  know  that  until  this 
world  is  evangelized  our  work  will  never  be  done. 

And  yet  there  are  those  who  say,  after  all  these  ex- 
planations have  been  made  and  the  matter  has  been  set 
clearly  before  them,  that  the  students  ought  not  to 
have  a  watchword  that  requires  as  much  explanation 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        519 

as  this.  At  one  of  the  meetings  of  the  representatives 
of  the  Missionary  Boards  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada,  in  New  York,  a  conscientious  secretary  made 
this  objection  to  it.  "I  think,"  he  said,  "  the  move- 
ment ought  not  to  have  a  watchword  that  requires  so 
much  explanation."  I  challenge  such  to  find  in  all 
history  a  watchword  that  needs  no  explanation.  Given 
a  watchword  that  needs  no  explanation,  and  there 
would  be  no  necessity  for  a  movement  back  of  it. 
Every  great  thing  that  has  ever  been  proposed  has 
demanded  explanation  and  defence.  Our  Lord  Him- 
self was  cast  out  by  the  most  religious  people  of  His 
day,  and  at  their  insistence  was  crucified.  As  I  look 
back  over  history  I  do  not  know  of  one  great  move- 
ment that  did  not  need  its  explanation  and  defence. 
And  missionaries  from  China  could  tell  us  that  our 
whole  gospel  is  an  enigma  to  the  Chinese.  Shall  we 
therefore  abandon  it?  If  one  says  he  is  a  Calvinist, 
many  regard  him  as  believing  what  he  may  not  believe. 
If  he  says  that  he  is  an  Arminian,  there  are  many  who 
would  charge  him  with  believing  what  he  does  not 
believe.  Every  party,  every  theology,  every  project 
needs  its  explanation  and  defence.  This  movement 
only  takes  its  place  with  all  the  movements  that  have 
smitten  disobedience  in  the  face  and  summoned  the 
Church  to  new  life,  humility  and  love,  when  it  stands 
in  the  shadow  of  a  watchword  that  challenges  some 
one's  contradiction.  I  think  that  perhaps  the  best  jus- 
tification to  be  found  for  it  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
same  secretary  to  whom  I  have  referred,  in  a  paper 
that  he  read  at  the  same  meeting,  was  obliged,  in  order 
to  convey  his  ideas,  himself  to  use  the  very  words,  "  the 
evangelization  of  the  world ; "  and  that  Lawrence,  in 
his  book,  in  the  subsequent  pages,  comes  back  without 
one  word  of  apology  to  the  use  in  precise  form  of 


520      Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

the  expression  which  he  has  reprobated  and  cast  out 
in  his  opening  chapters — "  the  evangehzation  of  the 
world."  We  have  no  other  words  with  which  to  ex- 
press the  idea, — the  responsibility  of  carrying  to  every 
creature  the  glad  tidings  that  the  Saviour  of  man- 
kind has  come. 

It  is  waste  time,  however,  to  apologize  or  to  answer 
disputatively  those  who  object  to  this  watchword. 
This  watchword  is  not  in  need  of  apology.  It  is  an 
appeal  and  a  ground  of  appeal.  The  call  of  this  Move- 
ment is  a  summons  to  take  up  as  Christ  commands, 
what  the  Lambeth  Conference  called  "  the  work  that 
at  the  present  time  stands  in  the  first  rank  of  all  the 
tasks  we  have  to  fulfill,  the  primary  work  of  the  Church, 
the  work  for  which  the  Christian  Church  was  com- 
missioned by  our  Lord."  And  therefore  on  this  posi- 
tive side  I  suggest,  first  of  all,  that  this  watchword 
proposes  the  most  true  and  worthy  conception  ever 
set  for  life  in  our  own  or  any  other  day.  Those  who 
denounce  this  as  a  trivial  and  superficial  task  are  surely 
thoughtless.  There  is  in  all  this  world  no  conception 
of  life  and  work  and  sacrifice  and  duty  that  can 
surpass  this  that  is  set  before  us  in  the  watchword 
of  this  Movement.  Where  can  men  find  a  more 
true  and  worthy  work  than  this  work  of  giving  Christ 
to  the  souls  of  all  men? 

On  his  first  visit  to  Northfield  in  1887  Professor 
Drummond  alluding  to  this  matter,  said  :  "  The  evan- 
gelization of  the  world  is  not  the  greatest  thing  in  the 
world ;  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world  is  doing 
the  will  of  God."  Granted.  But  is  it  not  pos- 
sible to  mislead  here  ?  What  was  the  will  of  God  ? 
Could  God  reveal  His  will  more  clearly  than  He  did 
by  Himself  surrendering  the  Son  of  His  love  that 
He  might  lay  down  His  life  for  the  redemption  of  the 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World       521 

world  ?  Could  He  have  revealed  His  will  more  clearly 
than  it  was  revealed  when  Jesus  Christ  upon  the  cross 
died  as  the  propitiation  not  for  our  sins  only,  but  also 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world  ?  The  will  of  God !  Did 
not  God's  own  spirit  say,  through  the  apostles,  that  it 
was  God's  will  that  all  men  should  be  saved  and  come 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth  (I.  Tim.  ii.  4)  ;  that  He 
did  not  wish  that  any  should  perish,  but  that  all  should 
come  to  repentance  (H.  Peter,  iii.  9)  ?  The  will  of  God 
has  been  made  so  plain  to  men  that  it  can  never  be 
made  more  plain.  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature." 

And  to  show  that  there  are  great  difficulties  in  the 
way  makes  this  work  seem  only  the  more  true  and 
the  more  worthy.  We  look  back  to  the  island  of 
Sancian  and  see  Francis  Xavier  standing  with  his 
hands  outstretched  to  the  great  closed  Empire,  crying : 
"  O  rock,  rock,  when  wilt  thou  open  to  my  Master  ?  " 
We  look  back  to  the  streets  of  Bujia  and  see  Raymond 
Lull  sinking  under  the  showers  of  stones  hurled  by 
Moslem  hands,  illustrating  the  words  of  his  own  great 
book,  "  He  who  loves  not,  lives  not ;  he  who  lives 
by  the  Life  cannot  die."  We  look  back  to  Coleridge 
Patteson,  with  the  five  wounds  like  the  wounds  of 
his  Master,  in  His  body,  drifting  in  an  open  canoe 
back  to  his  own  people  with  a  palm  branch  on  his 
breast.  We  look  to  Africa,  to  that  lone  bedside  at 
Ilala,  where  David  Livingstone  knelt  down  and  the 
rain  dripped  from  the  eaves  of  the  hut  as  he 
prayed  with  his  last  breath  in  his  loneliness  for  a  bless- 
ing upon  any  man,  American,  Englishman,  or  Turk, 
who  should  put  forth  one  effort  to  heal  the  world's 
open  sore.  And  all  these  lives,  with  their  story  of 
difficulty  and  obstacle  and  heroic  endeavour,  pass  be- 
fore us.     Dismay?     Discouragement?     Fear?     These 


52  2        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

lives  are  the  torches  of  God's  llaming  appeal.  They 
only  summon  us  with  greater  pathos  to  take  up  a 
Movement  which  gives  opportunity  for  such  heroisms 
as  these.  The  fringe  of  our  duty  barely  touched,  and 
the  restless  millions  waiting !  These  things  only  con- 
vince us  the  more  that  the  evangelization  of  the  world 
in  this  generation  is  a  high  and  holy  and  true  and 
worthy  aim  for  the  life  that  belongs  to  Christ.  "  I  can- 
not but  own,"  said  the  present  Bishop  of  Durham, 
"  that  the  idea  seems  to  me  nobly  true  and  reason- 
able." 

And  yet  a  certain  devoted  advocate  of  foreign  mis- 
sions, who  has  done  valuable  service,  has  spoken  of 
"  that  fantastic  scheme  of  evangelizing  the  world  in 
this  generation."  P'antastic?  The  missionaries  of 
India  did  not  think  so,  when  in  their  conference  in 
1892-3,  they  passed  a  resolution  of  appeal  which  con- 
tained these  words :  "  Face  to  face  with  284,000,000 
of  people  in  this  land,  for  whom  in  this  generation 
you  as  well  as  we  are  responsible,  we  ask,  will  you  not 
speedily  double  the  number  of  labourers  ?  "  The  mis- 
sionaries of  China  did  not  think  so,  when  at  their  last 
great  conference  in  Shanghai  they  deliberately  adopted 
a  resolution  on  "  the  supreme  importance  of  evangelis- 
tic work  to  the  effect  that  it  be  pushed  forward  with 
increased  vigour  and  earnestness,  in  order,  if  possible, 
to  save  the  present  generation,"  and  issued  two  ap- 
peals, one  calling  for  1,000  men  within  five  years,  "  in 
behalf  of  300,000,000  of  unevangclized  heathen,"  and 
the  other  signed  by  Dr.  Ncvius  and  David  Hill,  plead- 
ing for  "  the  speedy  carrying  into  execution  of  our 
Lord's  command,  *  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature.'  "  Fantastic  ?  The  apos- 
tles did  not  think  so  when  Paul  wrote :  "  Yea,  so  have 
I  been  ambitious  to  preach  the  gospel,  not  where  Christ 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        523 

was  named,  lest  I  should  build  upon  another  man's 
foundation,  but  as  it  is  written.  They  shall  see  to 
whom  no  tidings  of  Him  came,  and  they  who  have  not 
heard  shall  understand."  Fantastic?  The  Son  of  Man 
did  not  think  so,  when  in  the  hush  and  quiet  and  the 
holy  peace  of  the  resurrection  fellowship,  with  hands 
stretched  out  over  the  world.  He  said  to  His  dis- 
ciples :  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel 
to  every  creature." 

I  would  say  secondly,  that  not  only  does  this  Move- 
ment propose  what  is  truest  and  worthiest  to  be  set 
before  our  life,  but  it  proposes  that  which  is  distinctly 
feasible  and  possible.  We  do  not  predict  that  the  world 
is  to  be  evangelized  in  this  generation.  We  make  no 
predictions,  only  we  do  say,  with  all  conviction,  that 
we  believe  the  evangelization  of  the  world  in  this  gen- 
eration to  be  a  perfectly  possible  thing. 

It  is  possible  so  far  as  the  heathen  nations  are  con- 
cerned. Where  is  there  a  closed  door?  In  the  three 
generations  that  have  passed  since  William  Carey  did 
his  work,  the  walls  of  exclusion  have  broken  down 
around  every  non-Christian  land.  We  are  not  en- 
titled to  say,  that  there  is  one  spot  in  the  world  where 
the  Christian  Church  if  it  wants  to,  may  not  go  with 
its  message  of  love  and  life  of  God.  All  this  world 
is  open  as  never  before,  the  vast  multitudes  of  its 
peoples  accessible  as  never  before  to  the  preaching 
of  the  gospel  of  God's  Son. 

The  evangelization  of  the  world  in  this  generation 
is  possible  as  far  as  the  Church  is  concerned.  The 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ  has  the  men.  Let  us  leave 
out  of  account  altogether  for  the  moment  the  mighty 
forces  which  other  lands  can  pour  into  this  great 
work,  and  let  me  point  out  that  in  this  land  alone  we 
have    100,000    ordained    ministers,    many    of    whom. 


524       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

(is  it  not  true)  ?  could  be  spared  to  this  land  without 
over-seriously  crippHng-  the  evangelization  of  our 
home  peoples.  That  same  number  equally  distributed 
over  the  world,  would  accomplish  what  I  think  Dr. 
Nevius  once  proposed — viz.,  that  everywhere  there 
should  be  one  ordained  missionary  set  down  in  the 
midst  of  a  population  of  20,000.  With  one  missionary 
in  the  midst  of  every  20,000,  we  could  be  able  in  one 
generation,  with  an  adequate  native  ministry,  to  preach 
the  gospel  intelligibly  to  every  soul  in  the  world.  The 
Church  of  Christ  has  men  enough.  And  the  Church  of 
Christ  has  wealth  enough. 

And  no  new  organizations  are  necessary.  We  need 
only  the  expansion  and  enlargement  of  the  instruments 
and  agencies  that  have  been  already  developed. 

And  lastly,  not  alone  is  the  evangelization  of 
the  world  in  this  generation  a  true  and  worthy  con- 
ception ;  not  alone  does  it  propose  that  which  is  dis- 
tinctly possible ;  but  it  sets  before  us  also  that  which  is 
our  supreme,  our  primary,  our  imperious  duty.  Would 
that,  laying  aside  all  high  thoughts,  we  could  simply 
come  back  quietly  to  the  very  foundations  of  our  Chris- 
tian faith  and  our  Christian  life,  and  in  some  slight 
measure  realize  what  it  was  that  eighteen  centuries  ago 
took  place,  when  the  gates  of  Heaven  opened,  and  from 
the  glory  of  the  Father  came  out  One  to  wear  the 
livery  of  a  servant,  to  walk  up  and  down  among  men 
as  One  who  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to 
minister,  and  w^ho  upon  a  cross  between  two  thieves, 
laid  down  His  life  for  our  life  and  the  life  of  the  world  ! 
Would  that  recognizing  what  Jesus  Christ  did  we 
might  understand  also  for  whom  Jesus  Christ  did  this ! 
Not  for  any  little  company  of  those  who  were  to  be 
gathered  out  of  the  world  to  belong  to  Him  while  the 
great  multitudes  stand  beyond  the  pale  of  His  love — 


The  Evangelization  of  the  World        525 

He  died  the  propitiation,  not  for  our  sins  only,  but  also 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  And  would  that,  rec- 
ognizing these  things,  we  might  recognize  also  that 
the  path  which  He  Himself  trod,  He  trod  that  we, 
who  are  not  greater  than  our  Master  and  our  Lord, 
might  tread  also,  following  in  His  footsteps,  and, 
obedient  to  those  last  great  commands  in  which  He 
gathered  up  the  whole  spirit  and  character  and  pur- 
pose and  principle  of  His  life  and  mission.  In 
the  face  of  "  our  Lord's  great  commission  to  evangelize 
all  nations  "  as  the  Lambeth  Conference  calls  it,  who 
dare  say  that  we  are  not  charged  with  the  responsi- 
bility of  evangelizing  this  world?  Who  dare  stand 
in  the  presence  of  the  multitudes  who  have  only  one 
Name  given  whereby  they  must  be  saved  and  only 
one  door  furnished  through  which  they  may  go  in 
to  see  the  Father,  and  deliberately  say  to  them :  "  This 
gospel  is  ours ;  it  is  not  for  you  ?  "  How  dare  any 
of  us  stand  before  the  home  Church  whose  life  is  low 
and  poor  and  squalid  and  shabby  because  of  the  want 
of  that  great  expansive  sacrifice  that  should  send  its 
sons  and  daughters  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth 
— how  dare  any  of  us  stand  under  the  shadow  of  the 
cross  of  Jesus  Christ  and  say  that  it  is  not  our  task 
and  our  privilege  to  bear  His  gospel  through  the  whole 
world  and  to  every  creature? 

And  how  is  His  gospel  to  be  borne  through  the  world 
to  every  creature  unless  it  be  done  in  the  period  of 
one  generation's  existence?  We  have  no  duty  toward 
the  tenants  of  eternity.  The  dead  have  passed  for- 
ever beyond  our  reach.  Our  children  will  care  for 
the  un-born  of  the  non-Christian  world.  We  stand 
face  to  face  between  the  eternity  passed  and  the  eternity 
to  come,  with  hundreds  of  millions  of  needy  men, 
ignorant  of  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,  confronting  us. 


526        Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

How  shall  they  hear  without  a  preacher,  and  how 
shall  they  preach  except  they  be  sent?  And  how 
beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  those  who 
will  carry  to  them  glad  tidings  and  who  will  publish 
peace ! 

The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in  this  Generation 
is  no  play-word.  It  is  no  motto  to  be  bandied  about 
carelessly.  The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in  this 
Generation  is  the  summons  of  Jesus  Christ  to  every 
one  of  the  disciples  to  lay  himself  upon  a  cross,  him- 
self to  walk  in  the  footsteps  of  Him  who,  though  He 
was  rich,  for  our  sakes  became  poor,  that  we  through 
His  poverty  might  be  rich,  himself  to  count  his  life 
as  of  no  account  that  he  may  spend  it  as  Christ 
spent  His  for  the  redemption  of  the  world.  This  is 
the  call  of  Christ  in  this  world  of  ours.  Shall  we  heed 
that  call? 

Years  ago  Christ  trod  His  way  of  weary  suffering 
by  Himself.  "  Who  is  this,"  said  one  who  saw  Him 
coming.  "  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom,  with 
dyed  garments  from  Bozrah  ?  '  I  that  speak  in  right- 
eousness, mighty  to  save.*  Wherefore  art  Thou  red 
in  thine  apparel,  and  Thy  garments  like  him  that 
treadeth  in  the  winefat  ?  '  I  have  trodden  the  wine- 
press alone,  and  of  the  people  there  was  none  with 
Me.'  "  Once  He  went  out  alone.  Shall  He  go  alone 
still  ? 


XLV 

THE  SPEEDY  BRINGING  OF  THE  WORLD  TO 
CHRIST 

THE  problem  of  the  salvation  of  the  world  is  a 
problem  in  the  will  of  God.  It  is  the  will  of 
God  that  it  should  not  remain  so,  but  that  two 
other  wills  should  be  introduced  to  joint  re- 
sponsibility and  privilege; — the  will  of  the  Church,  to 
which  the  gospel  has  already  come,  and  the  will  of  the 
world,  to  which  the  gospel  is  yet  to  go.  Midway  be- 
tween the  will  of  the  loving  God  desiring  to  save  the 
world,  and  the  will  of  the  world  needing  to  be  saved, 
stand  the  men  of  the  Church  who  hold  in  trust  the 
gospel  of  God  given  for  the  salvation  of  the  world. 
The  agency  at  the  disposal  of  these  men  in  swaying 
the  will  of  God  is  prayer.  The  agency  at  their  dis- 
posal in  molding  the  will  of  the  world  is  the  preaching 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Powerful  as  is  the  ministry  of  prayer 
in  this  and  in  all  the  activities  of  the  Church  when 
rightly  used,  it  is  both  a  futility  and  a  hypocrisy 
unless  coupled  with  an  effort  proportionate  to  the 
love  of  God,  the  Church's  duty,  and  the  world's  need, 
to  take  to  the  world  which  is  in  ignorance  of  the 
gospel,  the  knowledge  of  its  only  hope  and  life.  For 
us,  accordingly,  the  problem  of  the  salvation  of  the 
world  reduces  itself  to  the  problem  of  the  prayerful 
effort  speedily  to  take  Jesus  Christ  to  the  world. 

But  can  we  take  Him  speedily?  It  might  be  an- 
swered that  the  question  is  an  irrelevant  one.  A 
Church  that  has  always  refused  to  condition  responsi- 
bility for  action  upon  ability  to  act,  when  speaking  to 
the  unregcncrate,  has  no  right  to  raise  questions  of 

527 


528       Missionary  Pruiciples  and  Practice 

difficulty  when  confronted  with  her  own  enterprises 
of  duty.  It  is  conceivable  that  through  long  disobedi- 
ence and  neglect,  the  atrophy  of  her  spiritual  powers 
and  the  enervation  due  to  her  selfishness,  the  Church 
might  have  lost  the  fresh  vigour  and  the  fervent  faith 
necessary  for  the  speedy  evangelization  of  the  world ; 
but  incapacities  self-created  cannot  constitute  exemp- 
tions from  duty.  No  difficulty  that  the  most  reluctant 
Christian  can  invent  can  suffice  to  nullify  for  us  the 
ever-living  and  imperative  obligation  to  make  Jesus 
Christ  known  to  all  mankind. 

But  frankly,  and  confronting  the  problem  of  the 
world's  evangelization,  there  is  not  one  of  us  who 
dare  allege  that  it  is  an  impossible  duty.  I  repeat  that 
we  are  able  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world  at 
once,  so  far  as  the  world  is  concerned.  It  is  open  now 
to  the  gospel  as  it  never  has  been  before.  A  hun- 
dred years  ago  the  world  paused  on  the  seacoast  of 
Africa,  and  its  maps  of  the  interior  revealed  its  abso- 
lute ignorance  of  the  continent.  The  Mohammedan 
world,  bigoted  and  not  understood,  was  without  a 
single  Christian  missionary.  The  East  India  Company 
pursued  the  consistent  policy  of  excluding  mission- 
aries from  its  territories  in  India,  and  sought  to  in- 
clude all  India  in  its  territories.  The  cannon  of  the 
Opium  War  had  not  yet  brought  China  the  blessings 
of  the  gospel,  and  the  curse  of  the  traffic  which  gave 
its  name  of  infamy  to  the  war.  The  edicts  which  pro- 
hibited Christian  faith  still  stood  by  the  roadsides  in 
Japan,  while  the  chains  of  Rome's  political  sovereignty 
still  bound  without  exception  the  Latin  states  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere.  \;The  world  was  a  sealed  world ; 
as  sealed  against  the  gospel  as  was  the  heart  of  the 
Church  against  the  purpose  to  proclaim  it.  Now,  we 
stand  before  a  world  with  all  its  gates  ajar.    We  have 


Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    529 

no  right  to  say  of  any  single  country  longer  that  it  is 
barred  against  the  gospel.  If  we  say  this  still  of 
Afghanistan  and  Tibet  or  of  any  other  land,  it  may 
be  truly  answered  that  the  Church  has  no  right  to 
call  any  door  closed  which  she  has  had  neither  faith 
nor  courage  to  attempt  to  open  and  pass  through. 

To  our  ability  to  enter  the  whole  world  must  be 
added  now  our  knowledge  of  the  physical  conditions 
under  which  the  mission  work  must  be  done,  our  ac- 
quaintance with  the  opinions  and  superstitions  of  its 
people,  our  experiences  of  the  real  character  of  the 
missionary  problem,  of  the  exact  difficulties  it  must 
meet,  and  the  precise  work  it  has  to  do ;  while  the 
genius  of  a  hundred  years  of  the  most  fertile  in- 
tellectual activity  of  the  race  has  spent  itself  in  de- 
vising means  and  facilities  for  the  use  of  the  Church 
in  the  day  when  she  shall  awake  to  perceive  the  true 
glory  of  her  mission  in  the  world. 

Not  alone  in  taking  Jesus  Christ  to  the  world  at 
once  are  there  no  insuperable  hindrances,  so  far  as 
the  world  is  concerned,  but  there  is  nothing  in  the 
equipment  of  the  Church  to  forbid.  It  was  reported 
at  the  Ecumenical  Conference  that  there  are  now  five 
hundred  and  thirty-seven  missionary  societies,  repre- 
senting hundreds  of  branches  of  the  Christian  Church. 
It  is  a  pathetic  commentary  upon  the  prayer  of  our 
Lord,  "  That  they  may  be  one  even  as  We  are  one, 
I  in  them  and  Thou  in  Me,  that  they  may  be  perfected . 
in  one,  that  the  world  may  know  that  Thou  didst  sent 
Me  and  lovedst  them  even  as  Thou  lovedst  Me,"  but  it 
is  evidence  that  the  Church  possesses  all  the  necessary 
missionary  agencies.  She  has  also  sufficient  agents.  It 
is  said  that  in  this  generation  there  will  go  out  from 
our  American  higher  institutions  of  learning  two  mil- 
lion young  men  and  women.     A  fraction  of  this  im- 


530       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

mense  multitude  added  to  the  force  upon  the  field  and 
properly  supported  by  an  army  of  native  aj^ents,  would 
suffice  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  every  creature 
before  the  younger  generation  of  to-day  has  passed 
away.  And  the  Church  has  ample  means.  As  has 
been  already  shown,  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the 
Church's  income  would  suffice  to  support  the  propa- 
ganda necessary  for  the  world's  evangelization. 

Not  alone  has  the  Church  the  agencies,  the  agents 
and  the  means,  she  has  also  available  the  omnipotent 
resources  which  I  have  already  described.  The 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  using  her  present  equip- 
ment, would  carry  at  once  on  the  lips  of  a 
Church  made  up  of  truly  earnest  men,  the  gospel  of 
the  world's  Redeemer  to  all  the  multitudes  for  whom 
He  died.  "  If  we  could  bring  back  the  Church  of 
Pentecost  to  earth,"  said  Bishop  Thoburn,  "  or,  rather, 
if  we  could  receive  anew  universally  the  spirit  of  that 
model  Church  of  all  ages,  the  idea  of  evangelizing  the 
world  in  a  single  generation  would  no  longer  appear 
visionary;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  would  seem  so 
reasonable,  so  practicable,  and  the  duty  to  perform  it 
so  imperative,  that  every  one  would  begin  to  wonder 
why  any  intelligent  Christians  had  ever  doubted  its 
possibility,  or  been  content  to  let  weary  years  go  by 
without  a  vast  universal  movement  throughout  all  the 
Churches  of  Christendom  at  once  to  go  forward  and 
complete  the  task."  And  what  the  Church  could  do 
if  possessed  once  more  by  the  spirit  of  the  living  God, 
she  ought  to  do.  "  It  is  the  duty  of  Christians,"  as 
Dr.  Joel  Parker  declared,  "  to  evangelize  the  whole 
world  immediately.  The  present  generation  is  com- 
petent under  God  to  achieve  the  work.  There  are 
means  enough  in  the  power  of  the  Church  to  do  it. 
There  is  money  that  can  be  counted  in  millions  that 


speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    531 

can  be  spared  without  producing  any  serious   want. 
There   are   men   enough   for    the    missionary   work." 
Whatever   may   have   been   the   Church's    position    in 
any  earlier  day,   her  position  now   is  one  of  perfect 
competence  to  obey  literally  the  last  command  of  Jesus 
Christ.    As  one  of  the  missionaries  in  China,  Dr.  Calvin 
Mateer,   a   sober   man,    has    said :    "  Once   the   world 
seemed  boundless  and  the  Church  was  poor  and  per- 
secuted.     No   wonder   the   work   of   evangelizing   the 
world  within  a  reasonable  time  seemed  hopeless.    Now 
steam  and  electricity  have  brought  the  world  together. 
The  Church  of  God  is  in  the  ascendant.     She  has  well 
within  her  control  the  power,  the  wealth,  and  the  learn- 
ing of  the  world.     She  is  like  a  strong  and  well-ap- 
pointed army  in  the  presence  of  the  foe.     The  only 
thing  she   needs   is   the   spirit   of  her   Leader  and   a 
willingness  to  obey  His  summons  to  go  forward.    The 
victory  may  not  be  easy  but  it  is  sure."     If  this  were 
a  human  venture  men  would  not  be  wasting  their  time 
in  the  discussion  of  its  practicability.     Men  and  money 
in  unstinted  measure  would  be  poured  out  if  this  were 
a  war  for  the  acquisition  of  territory,  for  the  subju- 
gation   of   nations,    for   the   suppression    of   disorder. 
Difficulties  arise  before  our  own  country  in  the  Philip- 
pines, a  small  fraction  of  whose  eight  million  people 
are  in  insurrection  against  authority  legitimately  estab- 
lished   over    them.      We    at    once    maintain    in    the 
Philippines    an    army   five   times    the    number    of    all 
the   missionaries    sent    out    by    the    whole    Protestant 
Church   for  the  evangelization   of  the   world.     Two 
small   states     resist   the   power   of  the    British    Gov- 
ernment and,  we  must  believe,  the  movement  of  destiny 
in  South  Africa,  and  Great  Britain  maintains  there  an 
army  more  than  three  times  as  great  as  would  be  re- 
quired   for   the   evangelization   of   the   world,    main- 


532       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

tained  at  an  expenditure  that  would  sufifice  to 
support  a  missionary  enterprise  as  glorious  as  the 
slaughter  of  men  who  believe  they  are  fighting  for 
their  liberties  is  sad.  The  Standard  Oil  Company 
sends  its  flickering  lights  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  Asia,  and  laughs  at  the  difficulties  that  must 
be  overcome.  There  will  be  thousands  of  households 
lighted  by  our  oil  to-night  in  the  villages  of  Asia  where 
the  true  Light  has  never  shined. 

If  we  were  in  earnest  about  it,  if  we  truly  believed 
that  it  was  a  great  thing  to  do,  a  thing  that  must  be 
done,  if  Christ  were  enough  to  each  one  of  us  to  make 
us  think  it  worth  while  to  put  Him  in  the  reach  of  our 
fellow-men,  we  could  evangelize  the  w^orld  speedily 
with  neither  difficulty  nor  sacrifice  worthy  of  the  name. 

But  what  do  we  mean  by  "speedily?"  How 
speedily  must  Jesus  Christ  be  made  known  to  the 
world?  The  missionaries  in  China,  sensible  men,  mis- 
led by  no  hallucination  and  pursuing  no  fanciful  illu- 
sion, gave  us  their  reply  twenty-five  years  ago :  "  We 
want  China  emancipated  from  the  thraldom  of  sin 
in  this  generation.  It  is  possible.  Our  Lord  has  said, 
'  According  to  your  faith  be  it  unto  you.'  The  Church 
of  God  can  do  it,  if  she  be  only  faithful  to  her  great 
commission.  ,  .  .  Standing  on  the  borders  of 
this  vast  empire,  we,  therefore,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
missionaries,  from  almost  every  evangelical  religious 
denomination  in  Europe  and  America,  assembled  in 
General  Conference  at  Shanghai,  and  representing  the 
whole  body  of  Protestant  missionaries  in  China — 
feeling  our  utter  insufficiency  for  the  great  work  so 
rapidly  expanding,  do  most  earnestly  plead,  with  one 
voice,  calling  upon  the  whole  Church  of  God  for  more 
labourers.  And  we  will  as  earnestly  and  unitedly 
plead  at  the  Throne  of  Grace  that  the  Spirit  of  God 


speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    533 

may  move  the  hearts  of  all  to  whom  this  appeal  comes, 
to  cry,  *  Lord,  what  wilt  Thou  have  me  to  do  ? '  And 
may  this  spirit  be  communicated  from  heart  to  heart, 
from  church  to  church,  from  continent  to  continent, 
until  the  whole  Christian  world  shall  be  aroused,  and 
every  soldier  of  the  cross  shall  come  to  the  help 
of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty."  What  evangeliza- 
tion can  there  be  that  is  not  immediate?  If  I  were  a 
heathen  man,  the  evangelization  that  did  not  reach 
me  in  my  lifetime  would  be  no  evangelization  at  all. 
And  the  world  in  which  we  as  Christians  are  to  preach 
the  gospel  is  this  present  world,  with  its  now  livinr 
multitudes  of  men  and  women  for  whom  Jesus  Christ 
died.  As  the  missionaries  in  the  Sandwich  Islands 
declared  in  their  appeal  more  than  two  generations  ago, 
"It  is  not  possible  for  the  coming  generation  to  dis- 
charge the  duties  of  the  present,  whether  it  respects 
their  repentance,  faith,  or  works ;  and  to  commit  to 
them  our  share  of  preaching  Christ  crucified  to  the 
heathen  is  like  committing  to  them  the  love  due  from  us 
to  God  and  our  neighbour.  The  Lord  will  require  of 
us  that  which  is  committed  to  us." 

Yet  there  will  creep  about  in  our  hearts,  lurking 
where  the  light  cannot  reach,  the  un-Christian  doubt, 
"  Is  it  necessary  for  us  to  concern  ourselves  with  this 
thing?  Suppose  we  can  evangelize  the  world,  why 
should  we?  In  the  providential  ordering  of  history, 
eighteen  hundred  years  have  passed  by  and  the  thing 
has  not  been  done.  What  is  there  to  show  that  a  duty 
that  lay  dormant  for  these  centuries  by  the  will  of 
God,  is  acute  and  pressing  now  ?  "  One  hundred  years 
ago  men  talked  this  way.  "  Let  us  pray  that  Christ's 
kingdom  may  come,"  said  Alexander  Carlyle,  opposing 
the  establishment  of  foreign  missions  in  the  General 
Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  1796,  "  as  we 


534       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

are  sure  it  shall  come  in  the  course  of  provi- 
dence." That  was  the  tone  of  that  day.  Let 
the  Kingdom  bring  itself!  That  view  is  intelligible 
on  the  lips  of  unconverted  men  whether  in  or  out  of 
the  Church,  but  it  is  not  intelligible  on  the  lips  of  Chris- 
tians. If  the  world  has  no  need  of  Christ,  we  have  no 
need  of  Him.  If  the  evangelization  of  China  must  be 
left  to  providence  unaided  by  the  Church,  the  evangeli- 
zation of  America  and  the  support  of  Christian  min- 
isters here  may  be  left  to  the  same  kindly  unaided  bene- 
ficence. Whatever  Christ  is  to  me  He  can  be  to  every 
man  in  this  world.  If  I  cannot  live  without  Him,  no 
other  man  can  live  without  Him.  As  He  only  has 
healed  our  lives,  comforted  our  hearts,  broken  the 
chains  of  our  sins,  and  given  us  assured  hope  of  what 
lies  beyond,  He  only  can  do  these  things  for  all  man- 
kind. And  not  only  does  the  world  need  Him  now,  but 
we  need  to  give  Him  now  to  the  world.  The  world 
will  not  more  surely  die  without  Him,  than  we  will  die 
Nvith  Him  if  we  refuse  to  obey  Him,  and  look  with  care- 
less, Christless  hearts  upon  the  world  that  waits  for 
Him.  The  Lambeth  Conference  touched  the  profound 
Christian  truth  when  it  declared,  "  The  fulfillment  of 
our  Lord's  great  commission  to  evangelize  all  nations 
is  a  necessary  and  constant  element  in  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  Church  and  of  each  member  of  it."  Can  you 
conceive  of  anything  more  fatal,  more  monstrous,  more 
immoral  than  a  doctrine  which  declares  men  lost  with- 
out Christ,  and  then  refuses  to  make  Christ  known  to 
them?  The  Church  that  proclaims  its  belief  in  the 
Lord  of  all,  and  declares  that  there  is  none  other  name 
under  heaven,  given  among  men  whereby  we  must  be 
saved  than  the  name  of  Christ,  and  does  not  at 
once  make  it  its  business  to  make  Jesus  Christ 
known  to  the  whole  world,  is  either  insincere  in  its 


speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    535 

professions  of  belief,  or  it  presents  a  spectacle  of  a 
debased  sense  of  moral  integrity  than  which  I  can 
conceive  of  scarcely  anything  more  despicable.  It 
will  not  do  for  us  to  cover  the  want  of  present  mis- 
sionary impulse  with  the  excuse  of  prospective  mis- 
sionary purpose.  As  Eugene  Stock  has  said :  "  For 
wTiom  are  we  responsible  to  give  them  the  gospel? 
Certainly  not  for  past  generations.  They  are  beyond 
our  reach.  Nor  for  future  generations  primarily,  al- 
though what  we  do  now  may  have  great  influence  upon 
them.  But  for  the  present  generation  we  are  surely 
responsible.  Every  living  African  or  Persian  or  China- 
man has  a  right  to  the  good  news  of  salvation.  They 
are  for  him;  and  as  a  Chinaman  once  said  to  Robert 
Stewart,  *  we  break  the  eighth  commandment  if  we 
keep  them  back  from  him.'  So  if  we  vary  the  form 
of  the  phrase  and  simply  say  the  evangelization  of  this 
generation,  this  appears  to  be  a  plain  and  elementary 
duty.  We  may  not  have  the  expressed  command  of 
Christ  for  it,  but  we  have  the  general  command  to 
make  the  gospel  known  to  those  who  know  it  not. 
There  seems  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  the 
duty  to  make  it  known  to  all,  that  is,  to  all  now  alive, 
lies  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  This  doubtless  should 
be  our  honest  and  definite  aim."  And  if  the  world 
needs  the  gospel  and  we  need  at  once  to  give  the  world 
the  gospel,  Christ  also  needs  the  immediate  preaching 
of  His  gospel  to  the  world.  Our  delay  is  not  alone 
the  source  of  loss  and  death  to  ourselves  and  to  men ; 
it  prolongs  the  travail  of  the  soul  of  Christ,  and  defers 
the  long  expected  day  of  His  triumph. 

"  The  restless  millions  wait  " 

is  only  a  half  truth; 

"  Christ  also  waits." 


^^6       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

And  what  are  God's  present  dealings  with  us  de- 
signed to  teach  us  if  not  that  He  is  ready  to  do  great 
things  ?  As  Dr.  Wilder  used  to  say :  "  The  largeness 
of  God's  blessing  on  the  puny  efforts  already  made  for 
evangelizing  the  heathen,  demonstrate  beyond  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  doubt,  that  we  are  well  able  to  evangelize 
the  whole  world  in  a  single  generation,"  Bishop  Moule, 
of  Hangchow,  told  me  when  in  China,  that  when  he 
came  to  Hangchow  there  were  forty  Protestant  Chris- 
tians in  the  Chinese  Empire.  He  has  seen  in  his  life- 
time the  Protestant  Church  in  China  multiplied  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  per  cent.,  and  penetrate  to 
almost  every  prefecture  of  the  Empire.  Of  the  great 
province  of  Manchuria,  a  barren  field  twenty  years 
ago,  Dr.  Ross,  of  tlie  Scotch  Presbyterian  Church,  re- 
cently declared :  "  The  gospel  is  speedily  gaining  such 
a  rapid  diffusion  that  we  may  anticipate  at  no  distant 
date  its  contact  with  every  village  and  town  in  the 
country."  And  there  is  nothing  in  God  to  bar  our 
seeing  all  over  the  world  repetitions  of  the  triumph 
which  George  Pilkington  describes  in  Uganda :  "  A 
hundred  thousand  souls  brought  into  close  contact 
with  the  gospel,  half  of  them  able  to  read  for  them- 
selves ;  two  hundred  buildings  raised  by  native  Chris- 
tians in  which  to  worship  God  and  read  His  word ; 
two  hundred  native  evangelists  and  teachers  entirely 
supported  by  the  native  church ;  ten  thousand  copies  of 
the  New  Testament  in  circulation ;  six  thousand  souls 
eagerly  seeking  daily  instruction ;  statistics  of  baptism, 
of  confirmation,  of  adherents,  of  teachers,  more  than 
doubling  yearly  for  the  last  six  or  seven  years,  ever 
since  the  return  of  the  Christians  from  exile ;  the 
power  of  God  shown  by  changed  lives ;  and  all  this  in 
the  centre  of  the  thickest  spiritual  darkness  in  the 
world !     ,      .      .     '  The  world  to  be   evangelized  in 


Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    537 

this  generation  ' — can  it  be  done?  Kyagwe,  a  prov- 
ince fifty  miles  square,  has  had  the  gospel  preached, 
by  Up  and  Hfe,  through  ahnost  every  village  in  the 
space  of  one  short  year,  by  some  seventy  native  evan- 
gelists, under  the  supervision  of  only  two  Europeans ! 
The  teacher  on  Busi  has  by  this  time  probably  ac- 
complished his  purpose  of  visiting  every  house  in 
that  island  with  the  message  of  salvation  on  his  lips. 
Soon  we  may  hope  that  there  will  be  no  house  left  in 
Uganda  that  has  not  had  God's  message  brought  thus 
to  its  very  threshold."  We  need  to  recall  in  this 
matter  that  it  is  for  God  that  we  are  working.  I 
have  said  that  if  this  were  a  human  enterprise 
men  would  scorn  to  waste  time  in  discussing  its  feasi- 
bility. Shall  we  have  less  faith  in  God  than  men 
have  in  themselves?  If  the  work  of  evangelizing  the 
world  at  once  as  a  human  enterprise  is  practicable, 
does  it  become  impracticable  when  we  realize  that  it 
is  a  divine  enterprise?  We  keep  falling  back  upon 
this  fallacy  in  our  thoughts  about  it.  We  need  to  re- 
mind ourselves  of  the  question  with  which  Sojourner 
Truth  rebuked  Frederick  Douglass,  when  in  one  of 
his  moods  of  despair  as  to  his  people; — the  question 
alleged  to  have  been  addressed  by  his  wife  to  Martin 
Luther  also :  '*  Is  God  dead  ? "  Who  set  us  this 
work  to  do?  On  whose  errand  is  it  that  we  are 
going?  Whose  kingdom  is  to  be  established?  It 
was  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  to  whom  power 
was  given,  and  nothing  is  impossible  with  Him,  who, 
when  He  said,  "  Go  ye,"  said  in  the  same  breath,  "  And 
I  am  with  you." 

Now,  if  we  can,  and  we  ought,  shall  we?  The 
general  duty  of  world-evangelization  the  Church  has 
acknowledged  for  years,  and  neglected.  Is  this  not 
the  hour   to  acknowledge  our  duty  once  again,   and 


538       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

perform?  But  men  say,  is  it  not  God's  rule  to  \Cork 
by  slow  and  unpcrccived  change,  lodging  in  human 
life  principles  which  creep  imperceptibly  outward  until 
at  last  great  changes  are  wrought  before  men  arc 
aware?  Do  not  Schmidt  and  Lecky  and  a  hundred 
more  demonstrate  "  that  social  emancipation  has  been 
far  more  the  result  of  the  indirect  than  of  the  direct 
action  of  Christianity.  Even  slavery  was  allowed  to 
exist  within  the  borders  of  the  Church  until  the  leaven 
of  the  Christian  spirit  had  so  operated  that  slavery 
became  impossible.  Great  changes  come  slowly."  This 
is  true ;  but  it  was  in  a  cataclysm  of  wrath 
against  the  iniquity  of  human  slavery,  and  of 
pity  for  the  human  slave,  and  of  passion,  good 
and  bad,  that  at  last  the  chains  of  that  iniquity 
were  broken.  It  is  true  that  the  forces  of  God 
work  quietly  and  imperceptibly  until  the  hour  of 
judgment  strikes.  There  were  the  long  expectant 
years  of  prophecy  borne  with  the  agony  of  hope  de- 
ferred, but  then  at  last  there  came  a  man  sent  from 
God,  whose  name  was  John,  and  on  his  heels  the 
Messiah  broke  upon  the  nation.  The  long  centuries 
we  call  the  Dark  Ages  threw  their  black  shadows  over 
the  world,  and  the  forces  of  God  wrought  silently  and 
unperceived  beneath;  but  at  last  the  thunders  of  the 
Reformation  tore  the  sky,  and  great  lies  were  slain 
in  an  hour  that  had  worn  crowns  and  held  sceptres 
and  damned  men. 

"  'Tis  first  the  night,  stern  night  of  storm  and  war, 
Long  night  of  heavy  clouds  and  veiled  skies; 
Then  the  far  sparkle  of  the  morning  star 
That  bids  the  saints  awake,  and  dawn  arise." 

God's   method   in   history   is   to   prepare,   but   it   is 
also,  having  prepared,  to  strike;  and  His  method  we 


Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    539 

must  believe  in  the  world's  evangelization  is  the  same. 
"  Many  persons  mistake  the  way  in  which  the  con- 
version of  India  will  be  brought  about,"  said  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan.  "  I  believe  it  will  take  place  whole- 
sale, just  as  our  own  ancestors  were  converted.  The 
country  will  have  Christian  instruction  infused  into  it 
in  every  way  by  direct  missionary  education,  and  in- 
directly by  books  of  various  sorts,  through  the  public 
papers,  through  conversations  with  Europeans,  and  in 
all  the  conceivable  ways  in  which  knowledge  is  com- 
municated. Then  at  last  when  society  is  completely 
saturated  with  Christian  knowledge,  and  public  opinion 
has  taken  a  decided  turn  that  way,  they  will  come 
over  by  thousands."  But  just  when  India,  or  any  other 
land  is  ready  to  swing  over  to  Christ,  we  may  not 
tell.  That  this  is  the  day  when  the  trial  should  be 
made  and  the  opportunity  given,  we  dare  not  doubt. 
For  one  hundred  years  the  forces  which  are  pouring 
into  the  world  still  from  the  pierced  hands  of  Christ 
have  been  fashioning  in  heathen  lands  the  thoughts  of 
men,  shattering  their  superstitions,  cutting  away  old 
restraints,  and  shaping  the  whole  course  of  their  un- 
resting movement.  But  all  this  so  to  speak  indirect 
evangelization  is  but  preparatory  to  that  supreme  dis- 
charge of  her  duty  by  the  Christian  Church,  which 
shall  show  to  the  whole  world  that  God  has  been  mak- 
ing it  ready  to  become  the  kingdom  of  his  Son.  To 
do  this  thing  now  is  the  duty  of  this  generation.  "  The 
world  has  too  long  been  under  the  influence,"  as  the 
Sandwich  Islands  missionaries  said,  "  of  the  scheme 
of  committing  the  heathen  to  the  next  generation." 
"  I  regard  the  idea  of  the  evangelization  of  the  world 
in  this  generation  as  entirely  scriptural,"  says  Dr.  J, 
C.  R.  Ewing,  of  India.  " '  The  gospel  to  every 
creature ' — that  means  to  every  man  and  woman  living 


540       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

now.  It  is  the  fault  of  the  Church  if  from  amongst 
the  present  living  generation  any  advance  to  old  age 
without  hearing  of  Christ  and  his  salvation." 

Some  such  noble  idea  as  this  is  the  vital  need  of 
the  Christian  Church.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
Church  had  to  fight  doctrinally  for  her  life;  when 
heresy  after  heresy,  involving  the  most  fundamental 
issues  in  the  evangelical  faith  assailed  her,  and  so 
hedged  her  in  that  the  mere  struggle  for  existence  con- 
sumed all  her  strength.  That  day  went  by  long  ago. 
For  the  Church  now  to  spend  her  whole  strength  on 
that  battlefield  is  to  war  with  phantoms,  save  as  the 
neglect  of  personal  living  duty  wall  furnish  the  very 
soil  in  which  fresh  heresies  will  grow.  Let  her  hear 
the  call  of  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  bidding  her  go  out 
now  into  the  highways  and  the  hedges  and  the  un- 
garnered  fields,  and  compel  men  to  come  in.  A  Church 
wholly  surrendered  to  Christ's  personal  leadership, 
utterly  bent  upon  the  largest  human  service,  filled  with 
the  passion  of  a  great  and  divine  love,  will  escape 
heresy  by  subduing  unbelief.  The  Church  needs  a 
supreme  world  purpose,  such  as  this  of  which  I  have 
been  speaking,  that  will  forbid  our  trifling  away  the 
time  of  God,  playing  with  details  while  men  die.  And 
if  you  wish  to  lay  hold  upon  the  hearts  of  the  young 
men  and  the  young  women,  without  whom  the  Church 
cannot  live,  you  must  offer  them  some  such  masterful 
mission  as  this.  It  was  this  that  thrilled  the  early 
Church,  "  Yea,  so  have  I  been  ambitious,"  said  Paul, 
"  to  preach  the  gospel  not  where  Christ  was  already 
named,  lest  I  should  build  on  another  man's  founda- 
tion; but  as  it  is  written.  They  shall  see,  to  whom  no 
tidings  of  Him  came,  and  they  who  have  not  heard 
shall  understand."  You  must  win  young  men  and 
young  women  by  offering  them  the  glory  of  a  great 


Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    541 

service,  which  is  also  a  great  sacrifice.  They  are  lost 
to  the  Church  that  does  not  look  out  upon  the  world 
with  the  very  eyes  of  Christ,  and  hunger  for  it  with 
His  hunger,  and  teach  its  children  to  live  for  it  and 
to  die  for  it  with  devotion  like  His. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  work  is  enormous.  But 
its  difficulties  are  its  glory.  Christianity  from  the 
beginning  has  "  relished  tasks  for  their  bigness," 
as  Stanley  said  of  Glave,  "  and  greeted  hard  labour 
with  a  fierce  joy."  "  I  am  happy,"  wrote  Neesima, 
"  in  a  meditation  on  the  marvellous  growth  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  world,  and  believe  that  if  it  finds  any 
obstacles  it  will  advance  still  faster  and  swifter,  as  the 
stream  does  run  faster  when  it  does  find  any  hin- 
drances on  the  course." 

I  have  purposely  said  this  to  suggest  and  make  room 
for  all  the  objections  which  lack  of  faith  and  lack  of 
love  can  bring  to  birth  in  our  hearts.  The  immediate 
evangelization  of  the  world,  men  say,  would  involve 
superficial  work;  let  us  be  slow  and  thorough.  Slow 
and  thorough  is  one  thing;  slow  and  stagnant  is  an- 
other. Superficial  work !  Who  proposed  that  the 
world  should  be  superficially  evangelized?  I  have 
quoted  missionaries,  men  like  Dr.  Mateer  and  Dr. 
Ewing,  who  are  engaged  in  educational  work  in  the 
most  thorough  educational  institutions  in  China  and 
North  India,  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  men  who 
are  doing  the  most  solid  and  substantial  mission  work 
in  the  world  are  not  blinded  thereby  to  the  Church's 
immediate  duty  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  every 
creature.  Superficial  work !  I  suppose  that  in  our 
Lord's  parable  that  husbandman  escaped  this  peril  who 
wrapped  his  pound  in  a  napkin  and  hid  it  in  the 
ground.  But  the  Lord  gave  his  commendation  to  the 
man  who,  having  five  pounds,  traded  with  them  super- 


542       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

ficially,  on  the  face  of  the  ground,  and  made  with  them 
five  other  pounds.  We  have  betrayed  our  Lord  under 
the  pretence  of  doing  thoroughly  his  work  in  this  land, 
where  we  have  sown  the  seed  over  and  over  again  in 
ground  already  sowed,  while  two-thirds  of  the  human 
race  have  been  allowed  to  live  and  die  in  ignorance  of 
the  fact  that  there  is  a  Saviour  or  any  love  of  God. 
And  in  our  folly  we  have  forfeited  the  richest  spiritual 
blessing  at  home  by  deliberately  transgressing  the 
plainest  divine  law,  "  There  is  that  scattereth  and  yet 
increaseth,  and  there  is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is 
meet,  but  it  tendeth  to  poverty."  Or,  it  is  said  that 
the  project  of  evangelizing  the  world,  practical  enough 
theoretically,  is  actually  impracticable.  Men  are  too 
much  engrossed,  it  is  said,  in  the  pursuit  of  gain. 

"  By  other  sounds  the  world  is  won 
Than  that  which  wails  from  Macedon; 
The  roar  of  gain  is  round  it  rolled. 
Or  men  unto  themselves  are  sold. 
And  cannot  list  the  alien  cry, 
*  Oh,  hear  and  help  us  lest  we  die ! '  " 

But  what  is  this  but  the  confession  that  we  cannot  do 
our  duty  because  we  will  not?  Or,  it  is  said  that  the 
immediate  evangelization  of  the  world  is  a  visionary 
and  childlike  project,  I  think  it  is.  And  where  there 
is  no  vision,  the  people  perish ;  "  and  except  ye  be  con- 
verted and  become  as  little  children,  ye  cannot  see 
the  kingdom  of  God."  It  is  a  project  of  childlike  faith 
and  of  glorious  vision.  And  these  are  the  visions  of 
it :  A  Church  obedient  to  her  Head,  warm  with  the 
glow  of  a  great  love,  and  thrilled  with  all  the  activities 
of  a  perfect  service ;  a  redeemed  world  free  from  the 
bondage  of  its  sin,  and  worshipping  with  glad  hearts ; 
and  in  innumerable  homes,  and  with  hearts  and  homes 


speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    543 

alike  purified,  adoring^  the  world's  Redeemer ;  and  a 
reigning  Saviour  crowned  at  last,  rejoicing  in  the  love 
of  His  Church,  and  satisfied  with  the  success  of  His 
work  for  the  world.  These  are  the  visions  which 
the  evangelization  of  the  world  lifts  before  our  eyes. 
Is  there  anything  to  shrink  from  in  them?  Could 
there  be  visions  more  enticing? 

Let  us  go  up  at  once  to  complete  this  work.  Whether 
or  not  the  whole  Church  of  Christ  will  awake  to  her 
duty,  at  least  let  us  not  be  asleep  to  ours.  Whether 
the  whole  Church  can  evangelize  the  whole  world  or 
not,  each  branch  of  the  Church  can  evangelize  the 
fields  for  which  it  is  immediately  responsible. 
What  Dr.  Mofifett  says  of  Korea,  is  essentially 
true  of  all  of  them.  "  Korea  can  be  evan- 
gelized within  a  generation,  but  in  order  to  ac- 
complish it  there  is  needed  an  added  force  of 
forty  thoroughly  qualified  missionaries  of  enthusiastic, 
victorious  faith  in  God  and  his  message.  It  would  also 
be  necessary  to  have  on  the  home  field,  a  Church  will- 
ing to  send  them  and  to  stand  back  of  them  in  prayer, 
led  by  pastors  who  will  influence  their  people  to  ap- 
preciate the  privilege  as  well  as  the  duty  of  the  Church 
to  perform  its  God-given  office  of  world-wide  evan- 
gelization." There  are  many  things  for  which  we  are 
not  responsible,  which  sweep  out  beyond  the  reach  of 
our  influence  or  direction.  But  for  this  one  thing  we 
are.  As  the  appeal  of  the  Ecumenical  Conference  to 
the  Christian  Church  declared :  "  Entrusting  to  Him 
the  certain  guidance  of  the  great  tides  of  influence  and 
life  which  are  beyond  our  control,  it  is  for  us  to  keep 
the  commandments  of  His  Son,  and  carry  to  those  for 
whom  He  lived  and  died  and  rose  again  the  message 
of  the  goodness  and  love  of  their  Father  and  ours. 
We  who  live  now  and  have  this  message  must  carry 


544       Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

it  to  those  who  Hve  now  and  are  without  it.  It  is  the 
duty  of  each  generation  of  Christians  to  make  Jesus 
Christ  known  to  their  fellow-creatures.  It  is  our  duty 
through  our  preachers  and  those  forces  and  institu- 
tions which  grow  up  where  the  gospel  prevails,  to 
attempt  now  the  speedy  evangelization  of  the  whole 
world.  We  believe  this  to  be  God's  present  call, 
'  Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us  ? '  We 
appeal  to  all  Christian  ministers  set  by  divine  appoint- 
ment as  leaders  of  the  people,  to  hear  this  call  and 
speak  it  to  the  Church,  and  we  appeal  to  all  God's 
people  to  answer  as  with  one  voice,  '  Lord,  here  am  I, 
send  me.'  " 

The  speedy  bringing  of  the  world  to  Christ  is  a 
consequence;  the  speedy  taking  of  Christ  to  the 
world  is  the  necessary  preliminary.  The  world  can 
never  be  brought  to  Christ  until  Christ  is  first  brought 
to  the  world.  It  is  vain  for  us  to  ask  God  for  one, 
until  we  have  done  the  other.  If  we  bring  Christ 
to  the  world,  God  will  bring  the  world  to  Christ.  And 
the  fact  that  God  has  bidden  us  to  do  this  thing,  lifts 
our  duty  at  once  above  all  cavil  and  excuse.  Let  us 
persuade  ourselves  of  this  once  for  all  by  these  three 
great  testimonies :  "  During  the  latter  part  of  these 
eighteen  centuries,"  said  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  at 
the  Liverpool  Missionary  Conference,  "  it  has  been  in 
the  power  of  those  who  hold  the  truth,  having  means 
enough,  having  knowledge  enough,  and  having  oppor- 
tunity enough,  to  evangelize  the  globe  fifty  times  over." 
"  It  is  my  deep  conviction,"  said  Simeon  Calhoun,  the 
Saint  of  the  Lebanon,  as  the  Syrians  called  him,  in 
his  dying  words,  "  and  I  say  it  again  and  again,  that 
if  the  Church  of  Christ  were  what  she  ought  to  be, 
twenty  years  would  not  pass  away  until  the  story 
of  the  Cross  will  be  uttered  in  the  ears  of  every  living 


Speedy  Bringing  of  the  World  to  Christ    545 

man."  And  the  testimony  of  One  greater  than  either 
of  these,  whose  name  is  above  every  other  name,  who, 
in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  sat  wearied  by  Jacob's  well, 
and  lifting  up  His  eyes  and  looking  upon  tlie  people 
as  they  came  to  Him  from  the  village,  drawn  by  the 
testimony  of  the  woman  that  He  was  the  Christ,  said 
to  His  disciples,  "  Say  not  ye  there  are  yet  four  months, 
and  then  cometh  the  harvest?  Behold  I  say  unto  you, 
Lift  up  your  eyes,  and  look  on  the  fields,  that  they  are 
white  already  unto  harvest."  The  fields  that  were 
white  then,  are  white  now,  if  we  had  but  eyes  to  see, 
and  hearts  to  heed.  And  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  waits 
patiently  for  His  Church  to  hear  His  call  and  come  to 
His  help. 


Index 


Abhedananda,  25lf. 

Aberdeen,   Earl  of,  99. 

Alexander,  104. 

Alexander,   T.  T.  362. 

Ali  Illahies,  344. 

Al  Kindi,  306,  312. 

Allnutt,  243. 

American  Board  Meeting  at 
Hartford  in  1836,  42;  at 
Albany  in  1855,  49. 

Anderson,  Rufus,  39,  49. 

Antioch,  Missions  in  the 
Church  at,  259f. 

Aoyama,   355ff. 

Appeal  of  the  India  Missions, 
522. 

Appeal  of  the  Shanghai  Con- 
ference, 522,  532. 

Archbishop  of  Canterbury's 
Mission  in  Persia,  297. 

Armenians,  300. 

Ashanti  Expedition,  441. 

B 

Babism,  366. 

Ball,   170,  176,   199. 

Barnabas,  259,  261,  264f. 

Barrett,  141. 

Barrows,  114,  119. 

Baurin  Yatsu  Buchi,  126. 

Beaulicu,  Leroy,   192. 

Beck,  472. 

Behrends,    35. 

Beirut  College,  238. 

Benares,  282. 

Bentinck,  252. 

Besitun,  343. 

Bible,   119. 

Bishop,  Mrs.  122. 

Boemisch,  473. 

Boston  Daily  Advertiser,  82. 

Boxer  Uprising,  ch.  xiii,  xiv, 

190. 
Bruce,  Dr.  Robert,  297. 
Bradford,  A.  H.  118. 


Brainerd,  394,  475,  488. 

Brewer,  438. 

Brockway,  242. 

Brooks,   Sidney,  i3off. 

Brooke,  Wilmot,  102. 

Browning,   15. 

Browning,   Mrs.  158. 

Brussels   Conference,  419. 

Bryce,   91. 

Buchanan's  Star  in  the  East, 

396.  . 
Buddhism,  283 ;    and    woman, 

458;    in   Japan,    350;    Viva- 

kananda  on,  22. 
Buddhist     Bonzes     in     China, 

198,  223. 
Burns,  William  C,  397. 
Burmah,  413. 


Calhoun,  Simeon,  544. 
Canning,  254. 
Carey,  252,  414,  470. 
Carlyle,    Alexander,    421,    533. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  317,  412. 
Carnegie,  Andrew,  497. 
Celebes,  413. 
Chamberlain,  Jacob,  no. 
Chang  Chih    Tung's    China's 

Only  liope,  184,  192. 
Chatterjee,  425. 
China    Inland    Mission,     106. 

473- 
Chinu  Mail,  131. 
Ching-Shih-wen,    149. 
Church     Missionary     Society, 

49,  473- 
Church   of    Scotland,   General 
Assembly    of,    in    1796,    18, 

421,  533- 

Clarendon,  Earl  of,  98. 

Coan.  333.  _        _ 

Colquhoun's  China  in  Trans- 
formation, 163. 

Comity,   66ff. 

Confucianism,  117.  283,  358, 
ch.  xvii. 


547 


548 


Index 


Confucius  on  arbitrary  or- 
ders,   10. 

Conger,   107,   151. 

Congo  Railway,  160. 

Connolly,  315. 

Cook,  Joseph,  350. 

Corbett,   Hunter,    172. 

Cosiitof^olitan    Magazine,    448. 

Cranborne,  Viscount,  gi. 

Crusades,  44of. 

Curzon,  299,  300,  308,  315,  423, 
432. 

Cust's  Languages  of  Africa, 
415. 

D 

Davis,  Dr.,  172. 

Davis,  Sir  John,  190. 

Darwin,  413. 

Dayabhaga,  253. 

Denby,   151,   177. 

Denmark,  King  of,  479. 

Dennis's     Christian    Missions 

and  Social  Progress,  419. 
Depew,  438. 
Dervishes,   329.   340. 
Discouragements,  293. 
Doshisha,  293. 
Douglass,  Frederick,  537. 
Drummond,     Henry,     72,    94, 

456,  _  520. 
DuBois's      Hindu      Manners, 

Customs    and     Ceremonies, 

52- 
DuBose's  Soteriology,  8g. 
Duff,   37.   242,   423. 
Dykes,  Oswald,  230. 


East  India  Company,  528. 
Ecumenical  Conference.  543. 
Educational  work,  52ff,  229fF; 

teaching  English,  239. 
Edwardcs,  Herbert,  523. 
Egedc,  471. 
Eitel,   198. 
Ellinwood,  407. 
Erskine,  John,  421. 
Essagin,  Marcos,  97. 
Evangelistic  work,  51. 
Ewing,  J.  C.  R.,  539. 


Fairbairn,  278. 

Family  baptism,  269f. 

Farquhar,  242. 

Fisher,  112. 

Fiske,  Miss,  471. 

Foot       ball,        Yale-Harvard 

Game  in  igoo,  496. 
Forman,    Henry,    242. 
Foster,  John,   479. 
Foster,  John  W.,  97. 
Francis  of  Assist,  429,  4gi. 
Freeman,  322f. 

French  in  Chef 00  in  i860,  16 1. 
Frere,  Sir  Bartle,  420. 
Freyer's  Directory,  232,  236. 
Fuller,  Andrew,  470. 


Gardner,  C.  T.,  176. 

Gardiner,  Allen,  472. 

Gautama's  Institute  of  the 
Sacred  Law,  253. 

German  parliament,  social 
democrat's  testimony  to  mis- 
sions, 83. 

Ghose,  Mun  Mohan,  254. 

Gibson,  13,  14. 

Gladstone.  422. 

Glave,  541. 

Good,  A.  C,  401. 

Goodell,  William,  473,  476. 

Goodnow,  John.  158. 

Gordon,  A.  J.,  482. 

Gordon,  "  Chinese,"  503. 

Gossner,  474. 

Grant  Duff,  23g. 

Green,  378. 

Greenland,  472. 

Griffin,  471. 

Groton  School,  245. 

H 

Hadi.ey,  246. 

Halifax,  Viscount,  28,  414. 

Hamilton,  George,  18,  421. 

Harnack,  124,  230. 

Harrison,  173. 

Hart,  Sir  Robert,  190. 


Index 


549 


Hawthorne,  Julian,  448. 

Hawkes,  460. 

Hay,  107. 

Hayes,  W.  M.,  246. 

Hill,   David,  522. 

Hill,  Rowland,  453. 

Hillier,  Walter  C,   175. 

Hindu.   The,  82,  85,   116,  284. 

Hinduism :      immorality,      82 ; 

and  woman,  ch.  xx ;  459. 
Hirum,   Lunbing,  416. 
Hobart,  320. 

Holmes,  Dr.  Geo.  W.,  315. 
Hotchkiss  School,  245. 
Houghton,    Lord,  282. 
Howson,   358. 
Hue,    194. 

Hunt,  John,  of  Fiji,  476. 
Hunter,  Sir  William,  414. 
Hyder  AH,  414. 


Ibrahim,  Mirza,  404!,  488. 
"  Ichang  Exile's  Prayer,"  164. 
I  III (yc rial  Gazette,  184. 
Independent,  157. 
India ;     advantage     to     Great 

Britain   of   its    Christianiza- 

tion,  28;  idolatry  in,  8if. 
India  Census  Report,  255. 
Indian     Evangelical     Review, 

115.  424- 
Indian  Nation,  114. 
Intemperance  in  Moslem  lands, 

256f,   3i2f. 
Imitation    of    Sree    Krishna, 

119. 
Ito,  Marquis,  426. 


Japan  ;  cause  of  transforma- 
tion, 28;  Christian  homes, 
462;  Boston  Daily  Adver- 
tiser on  Missions  in,  82! 

Japan  Weekly  Mail,  146,  151, 
157. 

Jessup,  H.  H.,  309. 

Jewett,  Miss,  461. 

Jews,  346f. 

Jiji  Shiinpo,  417. 

John,   Griffith,  486f. 


Johnston,  Sir  H.  H.,  4isf,  420. 
Jones's,    Griffith,    The  Ascent 

Through  Christ,  121. 
Judson,  395,  486,  491. 

K 

Kelly,  200,  202,  210. 


Lambeth     Conference,     422, 

518,  520,  525,  534. 
Laos  Mission,  404. 
Last  Command  of  Christ,  9-1 1, 

431  f. 
Lawrence,  John,  503. 
Lawrence's   Modern   Missions 

in  the  East,  47,  512. 
Lecky,  538. 
Legge,   190. 
Li  Hung  Chang,  138,  157,  173, 

174,  178,  ch.  XXXV.  447, 
Liu,  172. 
Lingle,   171. 
Linton,   79. 
Livingstone,     286,     395,     398, 

415,  476f,  521. 
Livingstonia,  419. 
Logan,  150,  165. 
London  Spectator,  99. 
London     Missionary     Society, 

Founding  of,  470. 
London  Times,  177,  415. 
Loneliness      of      Missionaries 

and   its    effects,    287f,   401  ff. 
Lone  Star  Mission,  471. 
Louvet,  L.  E.,  207. 
Lull,  Raymond,  295,  332,  488, 

503,  521. 
Luther,  537- 

M 

Mackay  of  Uganda,  395,  476. 
Mackenzie,  John  Kenneth,  174, 

406. 
Madagascar,  412,  475. 
Mahan,  160. 
Malcolm,  308,  311. 
Manu,  116,  249f,  250,  459. 
Mantras,  116. 
Martin,  S.  N.  D.,  382. 
Martin,  W,  A.  P.,  150. 


550 


Index 


Marshman,  414. 

Martyn,  Henry,  296,  310,  394, 

442. 
Matcer,  236,  531,  541. 
Mateer.  Julia  Brown,  400. 
Mattoon,  418. 
Maxim,  90,   163. 
McCartee,  235. 
McCheyne,  394. 
Medical  Missions,  59. 
Meshed,  307!. 
Methods   of   Missions,  36,  38, 

5 iff,  289f. 
Meyer,  F.  B.,  94. 
Michaelis,  471. 
Michie,   Alexander,    131,    I37f, 

140,  I53f,  171,  177. 
Miller,  124,  127,  243. 
Millar,  Robert,  470. 
Mills,  Saml.  J.,  471. 
Milman,  Hugh,  416. 
Milton,  479. 

Minto,  Earl  of,  423,  486. 
Missionaries    and     languages, 

415- 
Missions    and     philanthrophy, 

35-  .  .  „ 

Missions  and  politics,  28,  35, 
I3iff,  151,  204ff,  418,  ch.  xi. 

Missions  and  social  customs, 
27,  28.  35. 

Mitchell,   Arthur,  436. 

Moffett,  S.  A.,  65,  391,  543. 

Mohammed,  120. 

Mohammedanism ;  and  Morals, 
307ff;  and  Pilgrimages, 
33off;  and  Progress.  31 5^5 
and  Woman,  305ff,  459; 
evils  of,  23,  25,  29 ;  in  Persia, 
ch.  xxiv. 

"  Moral  Dignity  of  the  Mis- 
sionary Enterprise,"  4S2f. 

Moralily  of  the  Non-Christian 
Religions,  29,   ii4ff,  258. 

Moravians,  424,  437.  471. 

Moule,  Bishop  of  Hangchow, 
206,  536. 

Muhopadhaya.  119. 

Muir.  306,  321. 

Muirhead.  219. 

Mukerji,  424. 

Murdock,  242. 


N 

Nanking,  Prefect  of,  134. 

Native  Church,  62f;  the  aim 
of  missions,  39;  self-sup- 
port, 39,  65  ff. 

Neesima,   473,   542. 

Nestorians,  299f. 

Nevius,    104,  378,  382,  522. 

New  Guinea,  416. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  185. 

New  York  Evening  Post,  81, 

257- 

New  York  Sun,  181,  496. 

New  York  Times,  130. 

New  York  Tribune,  80. 

New  Zealand,  413. 

Nineteenth  Century,  459. 

Non-Christian  Religions; 
Christians'  attitude  toward, 
22,  I23ff,  274f;  inadequacy 
and  evils  of,  22,  iioff,  28iff, 

445f. 
Norman,  Henry,  222. 
North   American   Rcznew,   79. 
North  China  Daily  News,  174. 


Omar,  Code  of,  321. 
Oriental  Qiurches  and  Islam, 
32of. 


Palmerston,  414,   421. 

Palos,  387,  392. 

Paotingfu,     Prefect     of,     139, 

145- 
Parker,    Joel,   530. 
Parker,  233f. 

Parliament  of  Religions,  I24fl 
Parsons'    A    Life   for   Africa, 

401. 
Pascal,  71. 
Patteson,     Coleridge,    7,     423, 

472,  521. 
Paul    and    heathen    religions, 

128;  methods  and  principles 

of  his  work,  chs.  xxii.  xxiii ; 

and      "  missionary      calls," 

268f. 
Peet,  243. 


Index 


551 


Perry,  356,  510. 

Persia ;  beginning  of  mission 
work  in,  297 ;  custom  houses 
in,  32of;  dervishes,  329f; 
lepers,  328;  non-Moslem 
population,  279;  pilgrims, 
330 ;  testimonies  to  mission- 
aries in,  286 ;  travel  in,  324ff. 

Pfander,  297. 

Phelps,  Gen.  J.  W.,  412. 

Pilkington,  227- 

Pitkin,  507. 

Polok,  J.  E.,  2(^7. 

Potter,  Bishop,  248ff. 

Poverty  of  heathenism,  444. 

Press,  Presbyterian  Mission, 
Shanghai,  174,  414/. 

Prostitution  under  Moham- 
medanism, 307ff. 

R 

Ram  Mohun   Roy,  25 if,  425. 
Ransome,  Stafford,  87. 
Reed,  Wm.  B.,  96. 
Reform  Movement,  179. 
Reid,   Gilbert,    148,  409. 
Rcynaud,      Monseigneur,      ch. 

xviii. 
"  Rice  Christians,"  i7of. 
Riley,  Alhclstanc,  300. 
Ritter,   Karl,   413. 
Rodvvell,  320. 
Roman       Catholic       Missions, 

I40ff,  151,  ch.  xviii. 
Ross,   John,    106,    157,   536. 
Ryland,  John,  470. 


Sacred  Edict,  188. 

Saktism,  13. 

Sale,  302. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  97f,  407. 

Samajes,  242. 

Sarawia,   George,   472. 

Schism  in  Islam,  299f. 

Schmidt,  538. 

Schwartz,   413. 

Seelye's     Christian    Missions, 

37- 
Selwyn,   423. 
Serampore,  414,  422. 


Shaftesbury,  Earl  of,  544. 

Shaku  Soyen,  126. 

Sheffield,  235. 

Shiahs,  30if. 

Shaw,  Barnabas,  486. 

Siam,  King  of,  426. 

Simcox,  507. 

Sircar,  Mohandra  Lai,  254. 

Singh,  Miss,  173. 

Slater,   254. 

Smiles's  Sclf-Hclp,  359. 

Smith,  A.  H.,  179. 

Smith's  Life  of  Henry  Drum- 
mond,  455. 

Smith,  Stanley,  94. 

Sodomy  under  Mohammedan- 
ism, 309! 

Sojourner  Truth,  537. 

Song,   389. 

Stach,  472. 

Stalker,  285. 

Stanford,  Mrs.,  497. 

Standard    Oil    Company,    432. 

Stanley,  395,  415,  541. 

Stephens,  Sir  James,  394. 

Steere,  87. 

Stevenson,  Fleming,  483^ 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  13. 

Stewart,   Rolaert,  221,  535. 

Stock.  Eugene,  535. 

Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  98. 

Studd,  C.  T.,  94. 

Student  Volunteer  Movement, 
493.  508,  510;  its  Watch- 
word,  ch.    xliv. 

Sufism,    365! 

Sumatra,  416. 

Snnnis,  304. 

Sutcliff,  John,  470. 


Tabb,  Father,  466. 
Taiping  Rebellion,  504. 
Tamil  proverbs  about  woman, 

250. 
Tantras,  13,  199. 
Taylor,   Isaac,  256. 
Temple,  David,  473. 
Temple  of  Rajah  of  Nepaul, 

13- 
Terra  del  Fuego,  413. 
Thoburn,  435,  530. 


S5^ 


Index 


Thomson,  49. 

Thomson,  Joseph,  419. 

Thompson,  David,  360. 

Tagh-i-Bustan,   342?. 

Tovvnscnd,  Meredith,  28,  118, 
120,  239. 

Travcncore,  Census  of.  Testi- 
mony to  missions,  84. 

Treaty  rights  of  missionaries 
in  China,  132. 

Trevelyan,    Sir    Charles,    258, 

539- 
Tsiang  Nying-Kvvc,  379. 

U 
Uganda,  418,  474. 
United  States  Steel  Company, 

497- 
Urban,  Pope,  440,  510. 
Urumia  College,  238. 


Wallays,  194. 

Ward,   414. 

Warneck,  39. 

Washburn,  ;iy. 

Washington,  412. 

Wayland,  Dean,  438. 

Wayland,   President,  452. 

Wells,  409. 

Westcott,  15. 

Wherry,   3iof. 

Whiting,    Albert,    175. 

Whitney,  415. 

Wilder,  Dr.  536. 

Williams   College,  471. 

Wilson,  394. 

Woman  under  non-Christian 
religions,  115,  ch.  xx,  445, 
456f;  Kipling  on,  24. 

Women  of  India,  2S3. 

Wood,  Dr.,  418. 

Wood,  Sir  Charles,  414. 

Woolsey's    Political     Science, 

lOI. 

Wu  Ting  Fang,  158,  161,  ch. 
xvii. 


X 


Xavier,  521. 


Van  Dyke's  Other  Wise  Man, 

343- 
Vanneman,  324. 
Vaughan,   310. 
Vedantism,  113,  242,  425. 
Venn,  Henry,  39. 
Verbeck,  235,  369. 
Vidyasagar,  254!. 
Vivakananda,     22,      114,     118, 

425- 
Von  Hubner,  Baron,  213. 
Von  MoUendorf's  Family  Law 

of  the  Chinese,  191. 

W  Z 

Wallace's     Malay    Archipel-    Zockler,  92. 
ogo,  413.  Zwemer,  Peter,  462f. 


Ye.  389. 

Yen,  174. 

Yiang    Ling-tsiao,   385. 


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